


begin again

by ShowMeAHero



Category: IT (1990), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Amputee Eddie Kaspbrak, Angst, Canon Disabled Character, Childhood Trauma, Confessions, Disability, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Families of Choice, Fix-It, Flirting, Fluff, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kissing, M/M, Misunderstandings, Multi, Panic Attacks, Past Drug Addiction, Post-Canon, Romance, Slow Burn, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:27:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 36,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25037728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShowMeAHero/pseuds/ShowMeAHero
Summary: When Richie comes out of Port Authority, the sounds of traffic dull behind the roar of blood rushing in Eddie's ears.Heart pounding, he lifts his hand so Richie will see him. He thinks he'll forever remember the way Richie's eyes light up when they land on him, the way he grins wide and throws his bag over his shoulder, the way he moves just a little bittooquick in his haste to get to Eddie where he's standing on the sidewalk."Richie, I was—" Eddie starts to say, but he's cut off by Richie yanking him into a tight hug.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon/Audra Phillips, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Comments: 140
Kudos: 143





	1. start with summer

**Author's Note:**

> i SAID 90s reddie brainworms takeover

When Richie comes out of Port Authority, the sounds of traffic dull behind the roar of blood rushing in Eddie's ears.

Heart pounding, he lifts his hand so Richie will see him. He thinks he'll forever remember the way Richie's eyes light up when they land on him, the way he grins wide and throws his bag over his shoulder, the way he moves just a little bit  _ too  _ quick in his haste to get to Eddie where he's standing on the sidewalk.

"Richie, I was—" Eddie starts to say, but he's cut off by Richie yanking him into a tight hug. Richie's bag bounces off their sides, and their heads nearly knock together, but Eddie's chest tightens impossibly quickly all the same. He wraps his arm around Richie and buries his face in his chest, unabashed.

"I missed you," Richie tells him. His voice is low, rumbling in his chest; Eddie can feel it, so deep it starts snarling up inside his own chest, too.

"I missed you, too, Rich," Eddie says. Richie's grip on him is tight, all-encompassing, warm and strong and huge. His long arms wrap all the way around Eddie, rubbing his shoulders and the jut of his blade-bones there as he noses into Eddie's hair. Eddie laughs, once.

Richie seems to get a hold of himself in the next moment, releasing Eddie and withdrawing from him, putting an inch between them like it's a mile. Even though Richie throws his arm across Eddie's shoulders in the next beat of their hearts, turning him towards the street, he feels further away than he had during the hug.

"You're gonna show me all the best spots, right, Eds?" Richie asks. "You've probably got the inside scoop, you minx. What kinky holes-in-the-ground do your clients like best?"

"Beep, beep," Eddie says, smiling, just to make Richie grin back at him. He pops the back door on his car; Richie elbows it closed and opens the passenger door instead. "Sorry. Force of habit."

"I know I'm famous but—" Richie starts to say, but he's cut off when Eddie pushes him away, laughing. "Oh, come  _ on,  _ the people you drive aren't more famous than me, right?"

Eddie doesn't answer. Instead, he says, "I thought you might like to get a late lunch instead of going to some kinky hole-in-the-wall in the middle of the afternoon, if you'd like."

Richie looks like his brain has stopped, halfway between Eddie driving people more famous than him and Eddie saying  _ kinky,  _ which just makes his face go hot. He knows he must look pink and flushed, but he crams it down as he climbs into the driver's seat beside Richie. Finally gathering his bearings, Richie demands,  _ "Are  _ you driving people more famous than me?"

"You need to worry less about what others think of you," Eddie tells him.

"Thanks, Dr. K," Richie replies. "I'll get right on that as soon as I enter a sensible field like podiatry or celebrity driving."

"It's a car service," Eddie reminds him. "We just happen to have some high-profile clients." Eddie takes the moment they're caught in traffic to glance at Richie next to him; his heart flips over in his chest at the sight of him. It's nothing in particular, nothing special that catches his eye, but just the fact that Richie is  _ here.  _ With  _ him.  _ In his  _ car. Alone. _

"Do I have to pay for this ride?" Richie asks. Eddie grins.

"Don't be ridiculous," he says, pulling neatly into the parking lot of the diner. "Of course you do."

* * *

"So, they let you drive?" Richie asks, using a cold French fry to smear mustard around the paper lining the basket that formerly held his lunch.

"Who is  _ they?"  _ Eddie asks.

"I don't know," Richie asks. "The Council of Drivers, or whatever. The DMV? RMV? Is there a difference between those?"

"What are you talking about, Richie?" Eddie asks, before Richie’s train of thought completely derails. Richie uses his fry to motion absently to the place Eddie’s arm used to be. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” Richie bites his fry in half. “Sorry, I’m tactless. It’s a fault.”

“No, it’s okay,” Eddie tells him. “There’s really no good way to ask.” He looks down at the sewn-up end of his sleeve. It’s one of the first ones he stitched; he’s gotten better at doing it one-handed in the six months since, and his stitches don’t criss-cross  _ quite _ so sloppily anymore. “I’ve just got a couple special cars only I drive. They’ve moved the handbrake in them. Luckily, I suppose, I only lost the left hand. Not quite as important for driving.”

“I see,” Richie says. He picks up another cold fry with the very tips of his fingers. “They don’t let me drive anymore.”

“Why’s that?” Eddie asks. Richie motions absently towards his back with one thumb.

“When that thing knocked me around, it messed up something in my back,” Richie tells him. Eddie frowns.

“You didn’t tell me about that,” he says, his heart starting to race. “What happened?”

Richie waves him off. “Nah, Eds, you don’t wanna—”

“Yes,” Eddie says firmly. “I do. What happened?”

“My back was starting to hurt a little, nothing serious,” Richie tells him. He leans back slightly on his bench seat, wincing as he does. Eddie surveys him anxiously, looking for any indication he’s missed that Richie’s been in pain this whole time. He doesn’t know how he didn’t see it before.  _ “Eds.” _

Eddie’s eyes snap up from where they’re hurriedly scanning Richie’s side to meet his gaze instead. He wilts a little, rubbing at his face with his hand.

“Sorry,” Eddie says. He exhales, then says, “Geez, Rich, I’m sorry. I’m trying not to— Well, you know. Actions speak louder than words. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” Richie drops the fry back into his basket with a quiet crinkle before he sighs, pushing his hands back through his hair. “I didn’t tell you on purpose. I didn’t want to freak you out.”

“Richie,” Eddie says, trying not to sound admonishing. Richie’s cheeks pink, and he wonders if he failed.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Richie says. “Don’t scold me, Eds, you sound like Veronica.”

“Don’t say that,” Eddie says. He’s not a fan of Richie’s fifth ex-wife.

_ “That’s _ a scold,” Richie points out. He scoops up the fry and shoves it in his mouth like he’s tricking himself.  _ “Anyways,  _ I got knocked out cold after your whole—” Richie whistles, motioning to Eddie’s shoulder, “—and the  _ resulting head trauma,  _ as it were, in addition to the— What did they call it, the  _ unfortunate damage  _ to my spine— mean I am no longer road-worthy, unfortunately.”

Eddie frowns, feeling his brow furrow and the backs of his eyes burn. “Why didn’t you tell me that, Richie?”

“Like I said.” Richie shifts, looking uncomfortable.  _ Good.  _ Eddie’s hand is clammy where he’s fisted it in his pant leg. “I didn’t wanna freak you out. I didn’t have any concrete information until just a couple days ago, anyways, so there was no point in worrying you if nothing was wrong.”

“And?” Eddie asks.

“And what?”

“Is something wrong?” Eddie clarifies. Richie sighs, looking out the window to his left. His jaw is shadowed, darker red than the hair on his head, falling into his eyes. He pushes it back away from his face again before tipping his head to make eye contact again. “You’re really freaking me out, Richie.”

“I just can’t really walk right,” Richie says. The two of them look at each other.

“What— Is that all?” Eddie asks.

“My legs don’t feel right,” Richie admits. It’s like pulling teeth, with Richie. When they were boys, it was just as hard to get information out of him, if not harder. At least adult Richie has matured enough not to completely shut down when prodded for information. “They’re just gonna get worse and worse. My spinal cord— I don’t know, all that medical jargon, Eds, you know, it’s not really my thing. That was always more your schtick.”

Eddie nods, swallowing as he looks down at his own empty basket. He picks at the edge of the paper, tearing it a bit, eyes down. “What’s gonna happen, Richie?” There’s a beat of silence that Richie doesn’t fill. “Do you know?”

“They’re not sure,” Richie says. “If I do physical therapy and all that, it'll take a little while longer for it all to go. There’s a couple surgeries they want me to do. All that shit, you know.”

“And will you do it?” Eddie asks. Richie doesn’t answer again. “Richie.”

“I dunno.” Richie shrugs, winces again. “I dunno, Eds. Is it worth it?”

“Is it worth—  _ Yes,  _ Richie,” Eddie insists, leaning forward, his forearm braced against the table. “What are they recommending? Did they give you any specific names? Of treatments, maybe? Or doctors?” He realizes belatedly what Richie said, then frowns. “You found out just a couple of days ago?”

“Yeah?” Richie replies, more question itself than answer. “Why?”

“Before or after you called me?” Eddie asks. This time, Richie’s silence is more than enough for an answer.  _ “Why?” _

“I didn’t want to be out there anymore,” Richie says. “And you’re the only one that I thought— Ah,” Richie cuts himself off. “Nah. Doesn’t really matter what I thought. Important thing is, I’m gonna book a hotel for a couple weeks or so here in New York, and then I’ll figure shit out from there.”

“Are you leaving Los Angeles permanently?” Eddie asks. Richie grins at him. “Oh, Richie. You  _ can’t  _ be this impulsive.”

“Hey, we’re not strangers anymore, Eds,” Richie reminds him, and it’s true. They’ve talked on the phone at least once a week since leaving Derry. They know a fair bit about each other’s lives.

_ Not as much as I thought,  _ Eddie thinks bitterly. He allows himself a moment of anger, then shakes it off. It’s just concern with a mask on, anyways.

“I suppose not,” Eddie allows.

“Then you know I’m  _ exactly  _ this impulsive,” Richie says. Eddie doesn’t know what to say; for a moment, he just doesn’t say anything. Richie misinterprets his silence and hurries to fill it. “If it makes you uncomfortable that I’m on your turf, Eds, I can go somewhere else. Maybe Stan and Pat are looking for a third—”

“Why here?” Eddie asks. Richie’s skin has always been too delicate, a by-product of his red hair, and it goes pink fast again as he looks down at his hands.

“New York’s got a great scene for the movies, Eds,” Richie tells him.

“And you’re planning to be in movies now?” Eddie asks. “On top of the— All the rest of it?”

“I’m just trying to— I don’t know, take control of my life,” Richie says, all in a rush. Another trick played on himself. “That’s why I…”

He doesn’t continue after trailing off. Eddie raises both eyebrows at him.

“Why you what, Richie?” Eddie asks.

“That’s why I’m doing what I’m doing,” Richie answers, without elaborating. He waves vaguely with one hand, leaning back in the booth again. He goes slower this time and doesn’t flinch quite so roughly.

Eddie doesn’t push. Richie seems tense, strung tight, muscles all pulled taut as he tips his head against the back of his seat. Eddie can see the long line of his throat, his Adam’s apple, the edges of his collarbones underneath the undone top buttons of his shirt. He’ll ask again later, maybe, or another day.

“A couple of weeks, you said?” Eddie asks. It’s not much as a non-sequitur, but it’s better than Richie snapping.

“Maybe longer,” Richie says. “Hopefully longer. I sold my place in L.A.”

_ “Richie,”  _ Eddie repeats, heart pounding. “You  _ didn’t.” _

“I did,” Richie tells him. “I had to. I couldn’t stay there anymore, y’know, now that I…” He trails off, waves again. “After our close encounters of the third kind, it’s hard to go back to the way I lived before.” He huffs a laugh, wiping at his face with his hand. “Miserable.”

“Now or then?” Eddie asks.

“Most definitely then,” Richie says. He looks at Eddie when he says, “Less so now.”

The two of them just stare at each other for a long beat. The idea of leaving Richie after this, of letting him go to some hotel to stay alone when he’s left his entire life behind in Los Angeles not six hours ago, makes Eddie want to cry. He doesn't, though.

“Why don’t you come and stay with me?” Eddie asks. Richie’s brow furrows.

“I couldn’t impose on—”

“Please,” Eddie cuts him off, before Richie can go through the expected polite little platitudes about not wanting to take up Eddie’s time and energy. Eddie feels like all he’s got is time and energy in  _ spades  _ and nowhere to put it anymore.

Richie’s eyes flick between Eddie’s, back and forth. He leans forward, too, and Eddie can see the thin rings indicating the edges of his contacts in his eyes, this close up. He exhales, then asks, “What about your girlfriend?”

Eddie glances out the window. Outside, in the orange sunlight of a summer late-afternoon, a toddler hugs a small dog; across the street, a guy shoves his friend into the street, sending him sprawling. A cab slams on its brakes and honks, avoiding him narrowly as his friend laughs at him. The dog starts barking at the horn’s honk, making the toddler cry. Eddie watches it all unfold with a pounding heart that has nothing to do with potential car accidents or dog bites.

“I have to tell you something, Richie,” Eddie confesses.

“You haven’t got a girlfriend?” Richie asks. “What happened to that nice girl you were seeing, May— Mabel?”

“Yes,” Eddie says absently. “Mabel.” He rubs at the line of his jaw. He regrets mentioning her to Richie on the phone. It had been one date set up by his mother, and it had gone horribly, five months ago. Richie can't seem to stop bringing her up anyways. “It’s not so much about the girlfriend. Well, I suppose, in a way, it is a bit about her.”

“You’re beating around the bush, Eds,” Richie warns him.

“I’m gay,” Eddie says. It just falls out of his mouth. His hand is shaking as he forces himself to turn his head and make eye contact with Richie, the backs of his eyes burning again.

“Or not,” Richie says, “I suppose.”

Eddie laughs, burying his face in his hand.  _ “Richie.” _

“Sorry, sorry,” Richie apologizes. “That’s— Wow. Okay. I mean— Good for you, Eds. Seize the day and all that. Where’d you say you lived, again?”

Eddie groans, tipping his head out of his hand to look up at Richie again with one eye, squinting. Richie just grins back.

“Fuck, Eds. I’ve missed you like a motherfucker,” Richie tells him, before Eddie can even answer. His shoulders seem to relax; he deflates a bit, then sighs heavily. Eddie can almost see part of the mask slip away, just for a moment. Richie looks exhausted.

“I’ve missed you, too, Richie,” Eddie tells him quietly. He raises his hand for the check from their waitress, smiling when they make eye contact. When he looks back to Richie, he finds him smiling, too.

“I don’t have any problem with gay people,” Richie assures him. “In fact, I, uhh… I mean, in my time, y’know. It’s not uncommon for, for a guy to, y’know—”

“You’re going to hurt yourself, Richie,” Eddie cuts him off. “We can talk more about it after you’ve got some sleep.”

The waitress brings their check, and Richie catches it before Eddie can, snatching it and holding it out of Eddie’s reach with his long arms. Eddie doesn’t think when he puts his hand on Richie’s arm instead, just inside the crook of his elbow, and lets his fingers rest there. Both of them are warm to the touch. When Eddie tears his eyes away from where their skin is touching, Richie’s already looking at him, eyes huge and darkly green and surprised.

“Are you sure it’s okay if I stay with you?” Richie asks.

“I insist,” Eddie says. Richie doesn’t pay attention to the money he leaves for the waitress; Eddie doesn’t know if it’s kindness or absentmindedness. “We’ve got a lot to talk about in the morning, after all.”

Richie groans. “Usually when I hear that, Spaghetti Man, the situation is  _ very  _ different.”

Eddie releases Richie’s arm so he can stand, straightening out his shirt before he pushes his hair back out of his eyes and adjusts his glasses on his nose. Richie makes a cooing sound, tugging Eddie in and cupping his face in both hands, kissing him hard on the forehead. He makes a loud, comical kissing noise for effect, smacking right against Eddie’s skin, and it makes Eddie grin and blush all at the same time.

“You’re impossible,” Eddie tells him, shoving Richie off. Richie just throws his arm around Eddie’s shoulders and leans into him a bit when they leave the diner. He smells like sterile air and spicy aftershave and something else, Eddie’s not sure what.

“Maybe tonight won’t end so bad after all,” Richie says when he’s got his hand on the passenger door of Eddie’s car again. Eddie smiles back at him over the top of the car.

“We’ll see,” Eddie replies. He slides back into the driver’s seat.


	2. a single step

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So, you came to New York so I could drive you home from appointments?”
> 
> “No,” Richie says, too quickly. “I just thought of you first.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started writing a different second chapter then scrapped all of it and wrote this instead ! ?

Eddie tries to keep his cool in his kitchen while Richie’s freshening up in the bathroom down the hall. There are two guest rooms; he’d told Richie to pick whichever one he liked and to take his time while Eddie made them something to drink.

Now, he’s standing in his kitchen, staring at the counter, debating whether or not that drink should be alcoholic. He’s just settled on pulling out the red wine when Richie reappears.

“Hey, Spaghetti-Head,” Richie’s low voice says from close behind him, closer than Eddie’d been expecting him to be. He can feel Richie’s warmth all along his back, now that he knows to look for it, and Richie’s hand comes up to ruffle his hair. “What’re you thinking about? You look mad at your liquor cabinet, and I’ve only ever been friends with mine.”

“I was trying to decide what we should have,” Eddie tells him. “I was going back and forth between hot chocolate and wine.”

Richie’s quiet, doesn’t answer. Eddie waits for a long moment before he shifts to the left, tipping his head back so he can look into Richie’s face. He can’t tell what he’s thinking.

“Chocolate and wine go together, don’t they?” Richie asks finally.

Eddie’s about to argue with him, just for the sake of arguing, but then he closes his mouth. He considers the fact that he’s spent a lot of time being told what and what not to do, drink, eat, wear— anything, everything. And it got him all of fucking nowhere.

“Yes,” Eddie says. He pulls a bottle of wine free from the liquor cabinet and examines the label. “They do. Would you get out a saucepan for me, please? Top left cabinet.”

Richie has to stretch to reach the saucepan he chooses, which is exactly why Eddie asked him to get it. Had he gotten it himself, he would’ve had to get the stepladder from the kitchen closet, and Richie almost definitely would’ve laughed at him for it. It’s not that he’s short, just that he’s— well, slight, maybe, and Richie’s  _ freakishly _ tall.

“What’re you gonna do with that?” Richie asks, handing it over.

“Warm up our milk,” Eddie tells him. Richie frowns. “For our hot chocolate, Richie.”

“What, you don’t have those packets?” Richie asks.

“You don’t need to make it with packets in the microwave,” Eddie scolds him, setting the bottle of wine out on the kitchen counter. “You can take the time to make it properly from scratch if you’re patient.”

“Do I seem the patient type to you, Eds?” Richie asks.

“Don’t call me that,” Eddie reminds him. “Are you seriously telling me you only make your hot chocolate in the microwave?”

“Implying I make myself hot chocolate at all,” Richie says. “Eds, I order takeout pretty much every single day, and the days I don’t are usually just days I forgot to eat. A chef I am not.”

“Good lord,” Eddie murmurs, pouring milk into his saucepan. “You’re not lactose intolerant, are you?”

“I don’t know.”

_ “Richie.”  _ Eddie turns away from the steam to fix Richie with a look. “Well, we’ll find out, won’t we?”

“I suppose we will,” Richie says. He doesn’t move, for a while, and doesn’t say anything. Just hovers behind Eddie while he makes them both hot chocolate.

“Why don’t you get us two wine glasses?” Eddie asks him. “From above the refrigerator. Then you can pick us out a movie, I’ve got plenty of tapes in the living room.”

“Hey, here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?” Richie teases. “Tryna get rid of me, Eds?”

“You’re just making the hair on the back of my neck stand up when you hover like that,” Eddie tells him. Richie takes a step closer, grinning, head bowing down over Eddie’s shoulder.

“Hover like this?” Richie asks.

“Not so much like this,” Eddie answers. “This isn’t hovering so much as just clinging.”

"Are you calling me clingy?” Richie demands. “Don’t make me—”

“I wouldn’t call you clingy, no,” Eddie cuts him off. “My mother, now,  _ she  _ is clingy.”

There’s another beat of silence. Richie backs off, takes the wine glasses down from the cabinet on top of the refrigerator, the glass tinkling together as he holds them by the stems in one big hand. Eddie misses his heat and closeness, even if it was just teasing.

“How is Mrs. Kaspbrak, anyways?” Richie asks. The glasses clatter softly when he sets them down on the countertop.

Over the quiet rush of wine pouring, Eddie tells him, “I haven’t spoken to her this week.”

“It’s Friday.”

“I know,” Eddie says. He takes the saucepan off the burner and looks up at Richie over the top of his glasses; he hasn’t got a second hand to push them back up from where they’ve slipped to the end of his nose.

Richie whistles. “I know you said over the phone you were trying to get some space, but you’re really cutting the cord, aren’t you?”

“Don’t make fun of me, Richie,” Eddie says, feeling his face burn.

“I’m not,” Richie tells him. “Furthest thing from it, buddy, I’m really impressed by you. Your mom’s not good to you, she never has been. She was rotten when we were kids and by all accounts, she’s rotten now.”

“What accounts would those be?” Eddie asks. He spices their hot chocolate before he pours it into two mugs for them. Richie watches with more intensity than the action deserves, two full glasses of wine held carefully in one hand. With his other hand, he reaches up and pushes Eddie’s glasses back into place for him.

“Yours,” Richie says. Eddie can’t help but smile, his face warm for entirely other reasons as he focuses down on their cocoa. “No good parent manipulates their children into staying with them forever. And I would know, I had no-good parents.”

Eddie huffs a laugh, taking the TV tray out from its shelf under the sink. He loads up their drinks on it before looking it over with a critical eye.

“We need food,” Eddie says.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it,” Richie says. Eddie sighs, moving to go to his cabinet, but Richie catches him by the wrist. “Eds.”

“That isn’t my name, Richie,” Eddie tells him. He stares down at Richie’s hand around his wrist rather than looking into his eyes, but Richie’s quiet for so long that he just has to look up at him. “Why do we have to talk about my mother? Why don’t we talk about whatever brought you here from California, hm?”

“Now, that’s no fair,” Richie says.

“I don’t think it’s unfair,” Eddie argues. “I think it’s unfair to expect  _ me  _ to talk when you’re not willing to.”

Richie seems to consider this before huffing a humorless laugh. He lets go of Eddie’s wrist and says, “Yeah, alright. Fair point, Eddie.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to talk with you,” Eddie says. “I just want to talk  _ with  _ you.”

“Well, then I’m gonna need a lot more wine in me, pal,” Richie tells him. Eddie gets them a bag of baby carrots in the refrigerator and lets Richie carry their drinks on their tray. “I already told you why I left L.A., by the way.”

“You told me you left because you didn’t want to be out there anymore,” Eddie reminds him. “That’s not really a reason.”

“It is.” Richie looks over the living room. “Where did you say your tapes were, by the way?”

“Under the television,” Eddie tells him.

Richie pulls out the drawer of videotapes and starts digging through them. While he searches, he says, “They told me I’d need all this treatment and kept asking if I had somebody who could drive me home from things and I don’t. Not anymore, I guess, since I’m living by myself again. And then I realized, I really didn’t have anyone out there I could rely on like I could rely on you guys.” He holds up a tape.  _ “The Slumber Party Massacre?” _

“Sure,” Eddie agrees. “So, you came to New York so I could drive you home from appointments?”

“No,” Richie says, too quickly. “I just thought of you first.”

“Why?” Eddie asks.

“What’d you mean, why?” Richie asks. “Because we’re friends, Eds. And I thought maybe you’d understand.” Eddie can feel that there’s more he’s not saying, so he doesn’t speak. He just waits for Richie to fill the silence while he fiddles with putting the tape in the player. Eventually, he adds, “Everyone’s scattered to the winds now. Everyone’s got someone. Stan’s got Pat, Mike and Bill have got Audra and each other, and Ben and Bev have each other, and then there’s just us, I guess.”

“So, you came to me because I’m by myself?” Eddie asks, heart pounding. He’s not even sure why; he just feels overwhelmed. The crunch of static hisses through the room when Richie flicks the television on. The room feels abruptly filled with a charged energy from the electricity.

“Because we’re both by ourselves,” Richie clarifies. “Because I feel like I’ve got to start my life over completely from scratch and it seemed like you’re the only one who gets that, too. Everyone else just…”

He trails off, but Eddie knows what he means. All their friends are endlessly happy right now; every phone call is filled with joyous news and excitement and Eddie’s  _ so  _ happy for them, he really is, but it’s not easy to hear when every day is a slog just so exist. He’s trying to figure out who he is and what he likes, trying to settle into a new routine as an independent adult man, and he really feels completely alone in that. After all, nobody else his age has to do what he’s doing.

_ Well,  _ he amends mentally, looking Richie over where he’s standing in front of the television.  _ Almost nobody else. _

“I understand,” Eddie tells him. “I feel the same way. It gets lonely, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Richie says. He laughs, then repeats, “Yeah, I’ll say, Eds. I don’t feel like I’ve had a real conversation with anyone in twenty years. Seeing you guys in Derry again was like the fog suddenly just cleared, but I’m realizing— You know, I think the fog’s lifted for a lot of people a long time ago. I feel like I’m playing catch-up with my life.”

“I feel the same,” Eddie tells him, heart pounding in earnest now. Richie scoops up the remote from on top of the television and passes it off to Eddie before he takes the seat on the sofa next to him. He moves carefully, Eddie notices; he lowers himself down gingerly, situating himself in the corner of Eddie’s sofa. He makes a mental note to look into something maybe more comfortable for Richie to sit on before remembering Richie doesn’t live here. He decides it doesn’t matter, maybe; what other guests does he have, anyways?

“Do you?” Richie asks.

“I do,” Eddie tells him. “Are you comfortable?”

“Not really,” Richie says. They make eye contact again from the two opposite ends of the sofa, and Richie laughs before saying, “Oh, you mean, like, sitting here? Yeah, of course. It’s a nice place you’ve got here, Spaghetti-Man.”

“Thank you,” Eddie says politely. He presses play on the remote just to have background noise. “I feel like I’ve had a veil lifted from my eyes. My brain suddenly feels clear and I didn’t even realize it wasn’t.”

“Exactly,” Richie agrees. He picks up one of the wine glasses and passes it off to Eddie. “Exactly, Eds. That’s exactly it.”

“Where do we even begin?” Eddie asks. “We’ve got jobs, at least, I suppose, but I don’t know how to— how to make  _ friends.  _ I don’t know how to know people. It’s been hard enough as it is starting over the way I have already. I’m living out as a man but I’m not out as gay, I haven’t actually dated any men. And I’ve only  _ just  _ moved out of my mother’s home, Richie. I’m in my forties and I  _ just  _ moved out.”

“Early forties,” Richie points out. Eddie laughs dryly, taking a sip of his wine. “You don’t have to be anything except who you are, Eds. You don’t have to be anything except happy. You don’t have to be anyone except yourself. That’s all you can expect of yourself.”

Eddie considers this for a moment. “When did you get so wise, Richie?”

“Somewhere around the major head trauma, I think,” Richie says. Eddie lightly nudges his ankle where it’s stretched out on the sofa beside his leg.

“You should take your own advice,” Eddie tells him. “You can do anything you want.”

“I think I am taking my own advice,” Richie says. “I came here, didn’t I?”

“To New York?” Eddie asks. Richie doesn’t answer right away. “Rich?”

“Yeah,” Richie says. He takes up his own wine glass and swirls the wine in it so it sloshes close to the rim. It doesn’t actually spill, though. “It’s maybe not the smartest thing I’ve ever done, but it’s the first thing I’ve done in a long time that was just for me and to make me happy. Do you think that’s selfish?”

Eddie thinks about it. He shifts so he’s in the corner of the sofa, too, then lets their ankles tangle together. Richie smiles at him when they look at each other.

“Yes,” Eddie says. “And I think you deserve to be selfish. I think we both do, don’t you?”

Richie nods, leaning his chin into his free hand. He looks Eddie over rather than watching the movie playing on the television. “I think so, yeah. Maybe.”

Eddie smiles at him.

“Can I tell you something?” Richie asks. Eddie nods.

“Of course, Richie,” he says.

“I think I’m gay, too,” Richie says. “Maybe. Or something like it.”

Eddie’s heart races. His grip tightens around his wine glass, and he looks down into it, at a small water stain on one side. He feels like he’s going to cry, absurdly.

“Thank you for telling me that,” Eddie says.

“Great minds think alike,” Richie replies. “That doesn’t make you uncomfortable, does it?”

“That would make me kind of a hypocrite, don’t you think?” Eddie asks.

“I just mean that you thought I was straight,” Richie says, “and I’m not. For all you know, I’m here with an ulterior motive.”

“Of course you are,” Eddie says over the pounding of his heart. The rush of blood in his ears is deafening, and his voice half-cracks when he says, “You’re just here to annoy me.”

“You okay, Eddie?” Richie asks. Eddie swallows and nods, looking down into his wine again. It’s rich and dark and his head is throbbing.

“Sorry, I’m— Sorry,” Eddie says. “It’s not you. I just feel overwhelmed— No, well, emotional, not overwhelmed. Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me.”

Richie knocks their knees together on the sofa. “You already told me first. Couple’a homos, right?”

_ “Richie,”  _ Eddie laughs, admonishing.

“It’s okay,” Richie assures him. “I can say it now.”

“I don’t know,” Eddie says. “There’s something still so unsettling about it when you say it. Maybe it’s the mustache.”

“You think?” Richie asks. He strokes the mustache with two fingers just to make Eddie laugh. “I thought it made me look distinguished.”

“It makes you look like a creep,” Eddie says.

“You really think so?”

“No,” Eddie promises him. “It doesn’t look all that bad, to be honest.”

“I look like a baby without it,” Richie tells him. “I’ve been thinking about growing a beard instead, maybe. Ben made me feel a little too confident in that idea.”

“It’s not the worst idea,” Eddie says. “If I could grow a beard, I might. It just comes in all patchy.”

“Could  _ you  _ grow a mustache?” Richie asks. Eddie grins, taking another sip from his wine glass. His heart’s starting to slow again as Richie guides them away from less emotional topics; Eddie lets his attention drift back over to the television, something to look at while he calms back down.

“Not only can I, but I  _ have  _ grown a mustache,” Eddie tells him. The way Richie looks at him, all shock and delight, makes Eddie feel warm down the back of his throat.

_ “Please  _ tell me you have pictures,” Richie begs.

“I do,” Eddie says. “But only after the movie. If you behave.”

“Oh, Eddie, I  _ never  _ behave,” Richie reminds him. Eddie laughs, looking away from him again. “That’s no fair. You’re setting me up for failure.”

“Well, we have all the time in the world for you to try again another day,” Eddie tells him. “Just to say, by the way. Again. You can stay as long as you’d like, you’re always welcome here. I have more than enough space.”

“Are you sure?” Richie asks. He doesn’t seem like he’s joking. When Eddie looks at him, he’s looking back seriously.

“Yes,” Eddie answers. The smile Richie gives him is warmer and more genuine than any Eddie thinks he’s seen on his face since they were children.

“Good,” Richie says. “Me, too.”

Eddie smiles, too, hiding his grin behind his wine glass as he finishes the last of it and swaps out for his cocoa mug instead.

“You’ll tell me if I start to impose, though, right?” Richie asks. Eddie laughs.

“I would  _ never,”  _ Eddie says. “How uncouth. I’d sooner die.”

“Oh, because you’re such a delicate little flower,” Richie teases. Eddie rolls his eyes when he laughs, letting his head fall back against the sofa cushions. “I’ve missed the  _ shit  _ out of you, Eddie Spaghetti. I just feel like myself again.”

Eddie grins. The hot chocolate warms him all the way down to his belly, then to his kneecaps. He feels nearly dizzy with heat and the way Richie’s eyes are burning holes into the side of his head.

“What’re you going to do tomorrow?” Eddie asks. “Should you start looking for doctors? Or auditions, maybe? Do you have an agent?”

“My agent dumped me when I ding-dong-ditched to go to Derry the first time,” Richie tells him. “You better slow down, Eds, I’m not there yet. Just— Give me a week, alright? Let me take a little vacation so I can just chill out for a second before I decide the dramatic new turn I’m taking with my life?”

“Yes,” Eddie says. “Yes, of course, I— I’m sorry, Richie, I just always— It helps me to know what I’m going to be doing next. I forget not everybody handles things the way I do.”

“Such self-awareness,” Richie comments. “Such  _ growth.  _ What happened to the repressed Eddie Kaspbrak I saw back in Derry?”

“Gone,” Eddie tells him. “Pennywise doesn’t have control over me anymore.”

“And neither does your mother, or your girlfriend, or anyone,” Richie points out. Eddie sighs. “You okay?”

“Yes, actually,” Eddie says. He looks away from the glint of a knife on the television screen to meet the green of Richie’s eyes instead. His face is bathed in blue light in the darkness, making his pale skin shine, freckles standing out dark on his nose and his cheeks like they did when he was a boy. Eddie finds himself missing Richie’s glasses at the same time he notes that Richie needs more sunlight. “I’m better than I’ve been in a while.”

“I’m happy to hear that,” Richie tells him. He sounds genuine; Eddie believes him. “Y’know, Eds, we should get the whole gang back together. Invite everyone out here for dinner or something. Is everyone nearby enough to visit?”

“Bill and Mike and Audra are visiting the Great Lakes,” Eddie says. “Ben and Bev have been on a road trip, but last I heard from them, they were in— Oh, I think they were in Baltimore, that’s not so far. Stan and Pat are home in Atlanta, they’d be the furthest to travel.”

“Let’s do it,” Richie says. “Let’s invite them all up. I’d like to see everyone again.”

Eddie nods and drinks from his cocoa. The idea of it is sudden, but it sends a flare of warmth up his spine. He’s excited at the prospect of seeing everyone again.

“See?” Richie says. “You  _ do  _ know how to make friends.”

“You guys are my family,” Eddie tells him without thinking. “I love you more than anything.”

Richie smiles before it breaks into a yawn. He stretches, leaning his head back against the sofa cushions. “You know something crazy? I love you, too.”

Eddie feels warm all the way through. The movie rolls to an end, and he makes himself get up and find another video cassette to play next. He puts in  _ Night of the Demons.  _ When he turns back around, Richie has shifted on the couch to sit in the middle, his arm spread out along the back of it. There’s enough space for Eddie to either sit right next to him or to have his own space.

Eddie sits right next to him. Richie’s arm is warm along Eddie’s shoulders. They’re quiet as the movie starts up, the music over the introduction filling the room, but Eddie can barely hear it when Richie’s hand drifts down to rest on his shoulder, curving along the blade of bone there. His thumb settles down right above Eddie’s collarbone and strokes in a slow circle in the dip there. Eddie’s stomach turns, filled with butterflies; his hand shakes in his lap, even as he wills his heart to slow.

“I haven’t seen this one yet,” Richie tells him, voice low.

“Really?” Eddie asks. “I like it. It’s cheesy, though.”

“You always liked cheesy movies,” Richie comments. “And scary movies. You must’ve had a ball through the ‘80s, didn’t you? Plenty of movies for you to pick from.”

“I’ll catch you up,” Eddie assures him. “I’m afraid I’ve fallen a little behind on other genres. Comedy, for instance.”

“Have you seen anything I’m in?” Richie asks. Eddie’s embarrassed by the answer  _ — yes, all of them —  _ so he just laughs and leans his head into Richie’s shoulder, settling into his side.

“Why bother?” Eddie asks. “I’ve got the real thing right in front of me, unedited.”

“For better or for worse.”

“For better,” Eddie says. Richie presses his cheek to the top of Eddie’s head, for a moment, and Eddie can feel him smiling. His big hand comes up to stroke the back of Eddie’s head before returning to his shoulder again.

“Wow, this  _ is  _ cheesy,” Richie comments, watching the screen. Eddie tips his head down and yawns. “Educate me, Eddie.”


	3. and one back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Alright, you can’t make fun of me,” Richie warns him.
> 
> “For what?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> longer than i expected this section to be. it became its own chapter unexpectedly

When Eddie wakes up the next morning, he’s got an ache in his neck. He realizes belatedly it’s because he fell asleep at an angle on the sofa, right on top of Richie. He’s all tangled up in his side, Richie’s arm around him, his face pressed into the arm of the couch as he continues to sleep soundly. Eddie is just about to make himself sit up when he realizes exactly the situation.

He gives himself a moment just to lay there. He’s got an ache in his back, too, and the end of his arm is throbbing. His vision’s fuzzy; he realizes belatedly his glasses aren’t on his face. Lifting his head, he can see them on the end table beside the couch.

That movement is enough to wake Richie, who is, apparently, just as light a sleeper now as he had been when he was a kid.

“Eds?” Richie asks, voice scratching. He clears his throat. “Oh, for the love of— Sorry about that.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Eddie says, pushing himself to sit up. He rubs at his face, yawning; he can feel Richie’s weight shift on the couch cushions as he stretches.

“I fell asleep with my contacts in,” Richie grumbles. “Well, that’s just peachy. My eyes feel like dirt.”

“I don’t know why you don’t just wear your glasses,” Eddie tells him. “You looked so cute with them when we were kids.”

The both of them are quiet for a beat before Richie says, “I’ve been told I look handsomer without them.”

“Do you think I look handsomer without mine?” Eddie asks.

“You look incredibly distinguished, actually,” Richie says. “You look great with them. I just look like a huge loser, Eds.”

Eddie frowns, feeling a flare of anger. “Anyone who tells you that isn’t worth listening to,” he says.

“Your self-help books tell you that?” Richie asks.

“Yes, actually,” Eddie says. Richie laughs, clapping his hands down on his knees. He seems like he’s about to stand before he groans and lets his head fall between his arms.

“Alright, you can’t make fun of me,” Richie warns him.

“For what?”

“It’s a production to get up in the morning,” Richie says. “And to be honest with you, Eds, sleeping like that has pretty much ruined me. Any hope I had of getting to move around normally for the rest of the day is shot, I’m sorry about that.”

“Don’t apologize,” Eddie says. “It’s like you said yesterday. I understand it. All of it.”

Richie’s quiet for a moment. Then, eyes locked with Eddie’s, he asks, “Can I see?”

Eddie doesn’t have to ask what he means. He nods, tugging off the sweater he’d fallen asleep in before he pulls apart the magnets that hold his shirt together underneath. He slips it off one shoulder, then the other, leaving him in just his undershirt. Despite that, he feels exposed and vulnerable in a way he’s only ever felt while completely naked before.

The orange sunlight of early morning glints in his peripherals as he twists to let Richie see his arm. He still has the phantom pains of it, still reaches with a hand that doesn’t exist, and he nearly does it now; his arm twitches up like he’s going to touch Richie’s face, but he can’t.

Richie’s own hand comes up, fingertips hovering just a breath above his skin. Eddie can feel him like an electric charge. “Is this okay?”

Eddie nods, chest tight. When the pads of Richie’s fingers come into contact with the neat scar at the end of his arm, all the breath in his lungs comes out in a rush, his shoulders relaxing. Nobody touches him ever, really, as a rule. The only one who did was his mother, and most interactions were initiated by her; he doesn’t know the last time _ he  _ touched or was touched by somebody of his own volition.

“It healed up nice,” Richie tells him. He had seen the jagged mess Eddie’s arm  _ had  _ been, so he knows better than most just how true that statement is. Eddie vividly remembers hanging off of Richie’s shoulders as he got hauled out of the sewers, looking down at the torn remnants of his left arm, and thinking,  _ Am I gonna die, or am I gonna have to deal with this? _

“It did,” Eddie agrees. Richie’s thumb sweeps across the line of knotted scar tissue at the very end of his arm, right above where his elbow used to be. “They did a nice job cleaning it up.”

“Does it hurt?” Richie asks.

“Yes,” Eddie tells him honestly. “It hurts so bad sometimes, I can’t even breathe.”

Richie nods, head down as his bloodshot eyes examine Eddie’s arm. With a sigh, he releases him, his warm, electric touch vanishing from Eddie’s skin.

“I know that feeling,” Richie says. “And as much as I’d love to stay and shake hands with you a while longer, my eyeballs are about to come outta my head.”

“You should swap to your glasses,” Eddie tells him, again.

“Maybe I will,” Richie allows. “Alright, don’t look, this is embarrassing.”

Rather than looking away, Eddie instead gets to his feet and offers Richie a hand. Richie just raises an eyebrow at him.

“Let me help you,” Eddie says. Richie looks like he’s about to argue, and Eddie just furrows his brow. The two of them stare each other down. “There’s nothing wrong with supporting each other. It’s ridiculous to expect yourself to be able to do everything the same way you did before. It’s called adapting, Richie—”

“Yeah, yeah, alright,” Richie cuts him off. “It doesn’t mean I should need help standing when I’m barely forty.”

“There’s no one state of  _ normal, _ Richie,” Eddie reminds him. Richie’s face goes pink, a crease from the fabric of the couch still imprinted on his face. “If you need help, you need help.  _ I  _ need help. You expect me to just go around— I don’t know, smashing jars because they’re hard to open with one hand?”

“Do you go around smashing jars?” Richie asks. “I’d understand if you did.”

“You’re missing the point,” Eddie says. “Things have to change sometime, Richie. If I stayed the same as I’d been before, I’d still be living in my mother’s house, doing everything she asks of me, living my life as a lie. I don’t want to be that person.”

“You’re not,” Richie tells him.

“I know,” Eddie says. “I’m trying really hard not to be. And it’s—” Eddie starts, then stops. He feels the backs of his eyes burn, mortifyingly enough, and he looks away with a half-laugh, more of an embarrassed huff. He covers his eyes with his hand. “Sorry.”

“No, don’t be,” Richie says.

“It’s early,” Eddie says. It’s not a good excuse, and his voice cracks when he gives it.

“Yeah, I know,” Richie replies anyways. “I guess the guy who hasn’t changed at all in thirty-odd years isn’t the best guy to force all this shit on without warning.”

“Hey, I’ve changed,” Eddie argues, hurt.

“I meant  _ me,” _ Richie tells him. The two of them look at each other for another long, charged moment. “I—”

“Rich—”

“I’m changing now, aren’t I?” Richie asks. He frowns suddenly, his whole face clouding over; Eddie’s jolted by the shift. “Hey, what time is it?”

Eddie twists to check the small clock he keeps on the end table. Behind his glasses, the time blinks  _ 7:46. _ “Quarter of eight. Why?”

“Shit,” Richie curses. He holds his hand up without hesitation this time, and Eddie takes it, helping Richie to his feet. It’s a slow process, as promised, and Richie bites the inside of his lip until the skin breaks trying to keep quiet through it, but Eddie’s just glad he accepted his help in the first place.

“Are you in a rush for something?” Eddie asks. “I thought you didn’t have plans today.”

“No, I just have to make a call,” Richie says. “I usually— I’m supposed to call earlier.”

“Who?” Eddie asks. Richie finally straightens up, rolling his shoulders out. He takes up Eddie’s glasses from the end table and passes them off; finally, Eddie can see the fine details of Richie’s face, and he looks a little upset, maybe. Concerned.

“Don’t worry about it,” Richie says. He ruffles Eddie’s hair before he leaves; the room feels empty without him, too cold and much too quiet.

Eddie decides a shower will make him feel marginally more human than he does right now, so he straightens out his couch and takes their dishes to the dishwasher before heading directly for the bathroom down the hall.

Voices are clear coming through the door of the guest room Richie chose. Well,  _ voice,  _ singular: just Richie’s. The room he chose is right across the hall from Eddie’s master bedroom, and that gives him an excuse to pause in his doorway and listen. Not eavesdropping, really, because he intends to move right on. It’s just curiosity.

“I know, I’m sorry,” Richie’s saying, his voice muffled by the door and the walls between them. “But I caught you before you left, didn’t I?” He pauses for a response, then laughs. “Don’t go around saying that to people who aren’t me.”

Eddie’s skin itches, listening to this. Richie sounds so obviously fond of whoever he’s talking to on the phone, someone he wouldn’t tell Eddie about, wouldn’t even give him the  _ name  _ of. Who the hell would Richie want to keep secret from him? He’d thought they were past that, with Richie showing up here.

“I know,” Richie says again. Eddie’s nails tap against the wood of his door frame, and he has to stop himself from letting them clatter too noisily. “I miss you, too. But I’m going to see you again soon, alright? I’ve just got to figure some things out.”

Eddie doesn’t want to hear any more of the conversation, after that. He slips into his bedroom for his bathrobe before rushing to lock himself in the bathroom. The hot water drumming over his head almost drowns out the sounds of blood rushing in his ears and Richie’s voice echoing  _ I miss you, too. _

* * *

In the end, Eddie decides he has no right to be jealous.

So what if Richie came to see him? He’s the only one unattached. He’s the best bet to have a place to stay, and to have time to offer Richie. Like Richie said, he’s the only one who would really understand what he’s going through right now, too, sort of. It makes sense. He feels foolish for making more of it than it was, even if he didn’t consciously think those thoughts. There was an optimism there, almost a surety, something bone-deep that says to him  _ you and Richie are together again after all this, isn’t it perfect timing?,  _ but apparently, no, it’s not perfect timing.

While Richie wraps up his phone call and takes his own shower, Eddie digs out his little personal phone book and flips to  _ Uris. _

“Hello?” Stan’s voice asks on the second ring.

“Hi, there, Stan, it’s Eddie Kaspbrak,” Eddie tells him. Stan sounds like he laughs; the sound of it makes Eddie smile.

“You don’t need to say your full name every time, I recognize your voice by now,” Stan reminds him. “Good morning, Eddie.”

“Good morning,” Eddie replies with a grin, holding the phone between his neck and shoulder. “You don’t happen to have any vacation days you’re not using, do you?”

Stan’s quiet for a moment, then asks, “What’re you thinking?”

“Richie’s visiting me,” Eddie tells him. “We thought it might be nice for everyone to come up for a couple of days. Get dinner, spend time together, you know?”

“Sounds more relaxing than the last time we were all together,” Stan comments, which, of  _ course.  _ It’s not hard to beat the six of them visiting Stan in the hospital after he made a sudden and unexpected recovery from his suicide attempt. Eddie found out later Stan woke up around the same time they destroyed It; he tries not to think about what would have happened otherwise.

“Have you got any days free?” Eddie asks.

“A few,” Stan answers. “Let me get Pat over here with me—  _ Pat, honey—” _

Eddie tentatively schedules for them to come up for three days at the end of next week: Friday, Saturday, Sunday. He promises to call them back if any of the other Losers have a conflict and need to change the dates, then lingers on the phone.

“It’s nice to hear your voice again,” Eddie says impulsively. He can almost hear Stan smile again.

“It’s nice to hear yours, too,” Stan replies. “I’ll see you next Friday, Eddie. Don’t kill Richie before we get the chance to see him again, alright?”

“I’ll try my best,” Eddie tells him before Stan laughs and hangs up.

Bill is next; he’s rented a cabin out near the Great Lakes to work on his next book, and Audra and Mike are staying with him. Eddie’s not sure the exact circumstances of their arrangement, and he wants to ask— God, he  _ wants  _ to ask, he wants to know if Big Bill Denbrough is like him— but he doesn’t. He rings up the number Bill left him when he rented the place and waits through the rings.

“Good morning,” Audra answers the phone. “May I ask who’s calling?”

“Audra, hi.” Eddie shifts, running his hand through his hair, phone held tight against his shoulder. “It’s Eddie Kaspbrak. Is Bill or Mike around?”

“Sure thing, Eddie,” Audra says. “Got a preference?”

“Whoever’s closest,” Eddie says, smiling.

“Hey there, Eddie,” Mike greets him. Eddie smiles, rubbing at his face under his glasses. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“It couldn’t be a social call?” Eddie asks.

“If it was, would you have asked that?” Mike asks right back. Eddie laughs.

“I suppose not,” he says. “Are you and Bill busy next weekend?”

“We’re  _ never  _ busy,” Mike tells him. “Why, are you planning something?”

“Something,” Eddie says. “I figured I’d take the burden off your shoulders this time and invite all the Losers to New York to spend some time together. What’d you say?”

“I say that sounds like a great idea,” Mike says. “I’m sure Bill’ll like it, too—  _ Bill!” _

_ “What?”  _ Eddie can hear Bill shout from somewhere else in their cabin.

_ “Come here!”  _ Mike calls; Eddie waits and, soon enough, Bill’s voice is closer to the phone.

“What is it?” Bill asks. “Is everything okay?”

“Eds wants everyone to go to New York next weekend,” Mike says. “Do you want to—”

_ “Yes,”  _ Bill cuts him off excitedly. There’s a small rustle of static as the phone exchanges hands before Bill’s saying into the receiver, “Has everyone else already said yes? When should we fly out?”

Eddie handles the minutiae of Bill’s questioning until Mike can get the phone back, at which point he asks, “Is it okay if Audra comes, too?”

“Of course,” Eddie says, only a briefest moment of hesitation. Patty was coming, too, he reminded himself. It’s not just the seven of them anymore.  _ Things have to change sometime. _

“Then we’ll see you Friday,” Mike says.

“This is a great idea, Eddie, really,” Bill tells him. “I’m looking forward to it.”

Eddie’s face is pink when they hang up the phone. He can hear the shower squeak off down the hallway, so he doesn’t waste time dialing Ben and Bev’s number. They’ve been staying at the same hotel for the last week and change; he’s pleased when Ben’s sleep-rough voice answers, “Hello?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up,” Eddie says.

“Eddie?” Ben asks. “No, it’s okay— Is everything okay? What time is it?”

“Nearly nine,” Eddie says. “Nothing is wrong. I just had a proposition for you.”

“Lay it on me,” Ben says. It sounds like he falls backwards, likely getting comfortable in bed again.

“The other Losers are coming to the city to visit,” Eddie tells him.

“When?”

“Next Friday,” Eddie says. “Through Sunday.”

“Just yanking your chain,” Ben says. “It doesn’t matter when, we’ll be there. Well— Actually, I shouldn’t speak for Bev. Bev—”

_ “I’ll be there!”  _ Bev calls from somewhere near Ben. Eddie laughs.

“I look forward to seeing you,” Eddie says.

“And you’re still in the same place?” Ben asks. He and Bev are the only ones who have seen Eddie’s apartment, besides Richie; Ben had helped him move boxes in, and Bev had directed the movers with his (new, all his own, for the first time ever) furniture.

“Of course.”

“Good, I was going to say,” Ben replies. “You  _ better  _ be.”

“No moving anytime soon for me,” Eddie says. Richie comes back into the room, slicking his damp hair back from his head. He’s got a big, blocky pair of glasses on, and Eddie’s breath catches in his throat as his past-self and present-self morph into one. It’s like his heart recognizes Richie better this way and says,  _ Oh, right, it really  _ **_is_ ** _ you. _

“Not feeling good?” Richie asks.

“Not that kind of moving,” Eddie tells him. He holds the phone up. “Ben accused me of planning to move already.”

“He’d wring your skinny neck, and you’d deserve it,” Richie comments. He leans in close, so close Eddie can feel the shower’s humidity still clinging to his skin with a lingering damp warmth. “Hey, Benny, I’ll make sure he doesn’t go anywhere.”

_ “Richie?”  _ Ben asks incredulously. “What’s Richie doing there?”

“Is Richie in New York?” Bev’s voice asks nearby. “Why isn’t he back at home?”

“Did you tell anyone  _ else  _ where you were going?” Eddie asks.

“Couldn’t have covered up the receiver before scolding me?” Richie asks. Eddie holds up his arm and its distinct lack of hand to use for covering. “Right. Well, I might’ve only told you and— You know, maybe one or two other people.”

Eddie’s heart thuds in his chest. “Were any of those people Losers?”

“N…o,” Richie answers, long and drawn out. “Just you.”

Eddie looks up at him for a long moment, just trying to read his face. It’s almost easier, with the glasses. Like riding a bike. He can pick it up again because Richie’s old tics are back, familiar and fidgety as he fiddles with the frames.

“Stan and everyone are coming in Thursday night,” Eddie tells Ben and Bev. “We were planning to meet up on Friday for brunch. How does that sound?”

“Wonderful,” Ben tells him. “Keep Richie in one piece until then.”

“No promises,” Eddie replies. He sends his love to Bev before hanging up and swiveling to Richie again. “Why?”

“To which part?” Richie asks. Eddie stands, just to feel less like Richie is towering over him.

“Why didn’t you say anything to anyone else?” Eddie asks.

“I  _ did,”  _ Richie says, and the same aching pang comes back to Eddie’s chest. “Just— Not any of the Losers. I didn’t, uhh… I didn’t want them to feel bad, you know? Here I am, falling apart, and I’m just barging right in on their happiness. Nobody wants that.”

“Except me, I suppose,” Eddie says, feeling like leftovers. Richie frowns at him.

“That’s not what I meant, Eds,” Richie tells him.

“Don’t call me that,” Eddie says, tired. “Should I not have called them to come and see you? Should I have given you more time to get presentable for your friends first?”

Richie shoves his hands in the pocket of his jacket and says, “Hey, Eds, that’s not fair.  _ You’re  _ my friend.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me the truth?” Eddie asks. “I’ve told you everything.”

“Have you?” Richie asks. Eddie’s face burns.

“I  _ have,”  _ Eddie says firmly. He motions vigorously around his apartment. “What more could I possibly have to show you? Where could I hide anything? All I’ve done for the past twenty years is take care of my mother and drive in circles. That’s  _ it.” _

“Well, not everyone lived like that, okay?” Richie snaps. The two of them don’t look at each other; Richie’s eyes stay fixed down on the floor while Eddie stares up at the light on the ceiling.

“I’m sorry,” Eddie says.

“That’s—”

“It’s none of my business,” Eddie tells him. He hesitates, then thinks that again to himself, firmly.  _ It’s none of my business.  _ “You can do whatever you want. You don’t need to tell me and you definitely don’t need to explain yourself to me, I’m being— completely unreasonable, this has nothing to do with—”

“Hey, Eds,” Richie cuts him off. “I’m not mad at you. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have yelled like that. That’s on me.”

Eddie doesn’t know what to say to that. He glances up to see if Richie’s looking at him, and he’s surprised to find he is. “It’s okay.”

“It isn’t.”

“Well, I still shouldn’t have gotten mad at you in the first place,” Eddie asserts. “I was—”  _ jealous. _

“You were what?” Richie asks, when Eddie doesn’t finish.

“I just— I don’t know,” Eddie says. “Confused, I guess.”

“Confused about what?” Richie asks.

“Why you picked me,” Eddie says. He rubs his face under his glasses again, then asks, “Why me, Richie?”

Richie furrows his brow behind those great big glasses of his. Eddie’s not sure who told him he didn’t look attractive in them, but he has the urge to shout at them. Richie looks more comfortably himself in his glasses than he has in a  _ long  _ time.

“Why  _ not  _ you, Eds?” Richie asks. “I thought,  _ ‘I need somewhere to go,’ _ and you’re the first one I thought of.”

He stops there. Eddie wants him to keep talking, but he stops there and doesn’t continue. Instead, Eddie has to try and piece together what Richie is saying with everything he’s  _ not  _ saying, and the math isn’t coming out right.

“Okay,” Eddie says eventually.

Richie shifts his weight. He looks like he wants to leave, but he keeps himself in place. “Are you still mad?”

“No, Richie, I’m not mad,” Eddie tells him. Richie still looks concerned. “Are you ready for our drive or not? We’ve wasted enough time messing around in here.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m ready to go,” Richie says. “Lemme just grab my wallet, alright, Eds?"

Eddie nods. He’s grateful for the moment alone to collect himself. His emotions are right at the surface, a hair-trigger away, and he has to choke them back before they threaten to overwhelm him. He pushes his glasses up into his hair so he can drop his face into his hand and rub slowly at his temples.

“You feeling okay, Eds?” Richie asks. “‘Cause we can just go tomorrow. Like I said, y’know, it doesn’t matter to me when we do stuff. Plus, my back’s still feeling funky from sleeping like that, and I wouldn’t want to make you walk around if you’re not feeling up to—”

“Are  _ you  _ feeling okay?” Eddie asks, cutting Richie off. Richie looks away. “If  _ you  _ don’t want to go for a drive, we can just wait until tomorrow. Seriously. You can just be honest with me.”

“And you can be honest with  _ me,”  _ Richie echoes. The two of them just stare each other down for a long moment before Eddie acquiesces, nodding and looking away. “No, Eds, don’t do that. I’m serious, I mean it.”

“Okay, Richie—”

_ “Eddie,”  _ Richie says. Eddie looks back to him, hand starting to sweat. “I mean it. I don’t want you to just— I don’t know, keep sitting there and politely nodding and just doing whatever other people want. Do what  _ you  _ want. What are  _ you  _ thinking? What do  _ you  _ want to do?”

He can tell Richie’s sore and that his back is bothering him, and that’s enough for Eddie to want to stay home on its own. In addition to that, though, Richie’s right: his own head is pounding and his arm is aching and his chest feels too-tight. One of those days, not good but not really  _ that  _ bad. Just a day to get through.

“Maybe we should stay home today,” Eddie says. His chest twists as he realizes what he’s said a moment too late, that he’s said  _ we  _ and  _ home  _ so close together, but Richie either doesn’t notice or doesn’t want to comment.

Either way, Richie says, “Good call. You look exhausted.”

“Maybe we should get proper sleep,” Eddie tells him. The thought of being apart from Richie again makes his skin crawl, but he’ll do it. Maybe Richie needs time apart from Eddie and doesn’t know how to politely ask, anyways.

“I can’t sleep again this soon after waking up,” Richie says. “If it’s okay with you, I might just sit on your sofa here and try to get some feeling back in my legs.”

E ddie furrows his brow. He looks to the hallway, then back to Richie where he’s stripping his jacket and shoes off. It’s a no-brainer.

“What do you want to watch?” Eddie asks. He offers Richie a hand to help him lower himself to the cushions, and Richie takes it gratefully without a word, this time.

“Got anymore goofy horror movies, Eddie Spaghetti?” Richie asks.

“Oh, plenty,” Eddie tells him, and goes to pry the drawer open again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sometimes plans change and that's okay


	4. along the way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie can hear Richie from the second he wakes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 👁👅👁

Eddie can hear Richie from the second he wakes up.

They both successfully made it to their own beds last night; since those beds are directly across the hall from one another, Eddie can hear distinctly when Richie wakes up with a sharp gasp and a cut-off shout. It’s muffled almost instantly, but Eddie knows exactly what it is. It’s familiar; he woke up the same way an hour ago, and he’s been reading in bed ever since.

He leaves his room quietly, gingerly stepping up to Richie’s closed door. It’s only once he’s actually there that he hesitates, rocking back on his heels, hand tapping against his thigh rather than knocking on the wood. He hesitates nearly  _ too  _ long; he can hear the creak of the mattress inside the room, likely as Richie moves to get up, so he knocks quickly.

There’s a pause. Then, Richie’s sleep-rough voice calls, “Yeah, Eds?”

“Can I come in?” Eddie asks. He forgot his glasses, and his vision’s blurred but not unmanageable. He can find the doorknob easily enough when Richie agrees to let him in.

Luckily, Richie hadn’t locked the door the night before. Eddie’s not sure what that means,  _ if  _ it means anything. He pushes it out of his mind for now.

“Hi,” Eddie says quietly from the doorway. Richie’s sitting up in bed, pillows thrown to the floor, blankets tangled up near his ankles. He’s only got a pair of boxer shorts on; all his freckled skin is flushed red and slick with sweat as he catches his breath.

“Sorry if I woke you,” Richie says. He still sounds half-asleep, disoriented. Eddie shuts the door softly behind himself.

“You didn’t,” Eddie tells him. “Did you have a bad dream?”

Richie huffs. There’s a humorless smile on his face as he grabs his glasses off the nightstand, like he doesn’t actually find any of this funny but doesn’t know what else to do with his face. “I guess so. It was more like a memory.”

“With It again?” Eddie asks softly. Richie’s skin breaks out in gooseflesh all along his shoulders, down his arms and his chest. He’s dusted with a fine, dark auburn hair; Eddie wants to touch him, but he holds himself back.

“Yeah,” Richie confesses. He rubs circles into the sides of his left kneecap with his thumbs as he speaks, eyes focused downwards.

When he doesn’t offer up any more information, Eddie asks, “Do you want to talk about it?”

Richie sighs. “What’s to talk about, Eds?” he asks. “I have these dreams where— I don’t know. You know what, actually, I don’t know why we’re talking about this, it’s just a dr—”

“It’s not  _ just  _ a dream,” Eddie argues. “It’s a  _ nightmare,  _ it actually  _ happened,  _ and, most importantly, it’s bothering you.”

Richie lifts his head and the two of them look at each other for a long moment. Eddie slowly sits down on the edge of Richie’s bed— the guest bed— and reaches out to put his hand over one of Richie’s wrists, stopping the red marks he’s rubbing into his skin. This close up, Eddie can see him slightly clearer, even without his glasses.

“What happened?” Eddie asks. Richie huffs, looking down to their hands.

“I have this dream,” Richie starts to say, then stops. He seems to debate his next words before repeating, “I have this dream, and… In the dream, we’re all down with the clown again, right? And all the same stuff’s happening that happened in real life, but instead of taking you to the hospital, I— You—” Richie lets out a shuddering exhale. He pulls his hands free from Eddie’s hold to press the heels of them into his eyes under his glasses. He exhales, slowly. When he can speak without his voice breaking, he says, “You die. It killed you.”

Eddie’s heart races. “You have a dream where I die?”

“A nightmare,” Richie clarifies quietly. He pushes his hair back from his face with both hands. It’s getting long again, starting to curl at the ends like it had when they were children. He hasn’t cared as much about his appearance in the last couple of days as he’d seemed to before, but Eddie hasn’t pushed the issue yet. One thing at a time.

“A nightmare,” Eddie echoes in agreement.

“Yeah, a nightmare.” Richie drags his hands down his face, leaving pale lines before the blood rushes back in to fill the space. “And you just fucking die down there, Eds, and I—” His voice  _ does  _ break, now, and he drops his head, exhaling roughly. He shakes his head. “Fuck. And I just fucking carried your body out. Your dead fucking body—”

“Hey, hey,” Eddie cuts him off. He feels bold, so he puts his hand on Richie’s shoulder, gripping him firmly. When the two of them make eye contact, Eddie says, “I know it’s upsetting to see, but it didn’t really happen. I’m all right.” Eddie squeezes Richie’s shoulder with his right hand and smiles, asks, “Get it? All right?”

Richie laughs, one tear spilling down his face. He hastily swipes it away. “That was a terrible one, Eds.”

“Until you write new material for me, I’ve got to take what I can get,” Eddie says. It takes him a moment to decide to do it, but then his hand slips up to cup Richie’s neck instead. His thumb strokes over the Adam’s apple of his throat. Richie swallows. “Everything is okay. I’m not dead, Stan’s not dead, nobody’s dead. We’re all alive and that won’t be changing any time soon, you got that? What’d you tell me when I woke up in the hospital?”

“I don’t know, Eds,” Richie says. “I said a lot of things.”

“I was so scared,” Eddie reminds him. His heart pounds, and he says,  _ “So  _ scared, Rich. And I asked you— Well, one of the many things I asked when I woke up there— I asked, ‘What if it gets infected?’”

Richie laughs, covering his eyes with one hand. “Oh,  _ yeah.” _

“And you said, ‘It got bitten off by a clown,’” Eddie recounts. “‘The worst thing that could happen already happened.’”

The two of them sit there in silence. Then, Richie says, “You’ve gotten too smart for your own good.”

“Are you implying I was  _ dumb  _ as a child?” Eddie demands, no heat in his voice. He squeezes the juncture of Richie’s throat and shoulder before deciding he’s overstayed his welcome and withdrawing his hand.

“Of course not,” Richie says.

“The worst thing that could happen,” Eddie repeats, “already happened. You saw me die in your dream, and I— I almost died in real life, too. We’ve already had to deal with it. Everything else should be just a— a walk in the park now, right?”

Richie’s shoulders shake, and Eddie’s briefly terrified he’s somehow made him cry before he realizes he’s laughing. When Richie lifts his head and meets Eddie’s eyes again, sure enough, he’s smiling. 

“I never thought I’d see the day when Eddie Kaspbrak calmed  _ me  _ down over something ridiculous,” Richie tells him.

“Hey,” Eddie admonishes him. “Excuse you—”

“Who’m I kidding?” Richie continues, like Eddie hadn’t even spoken. “You’ve always been my voice of reason.”

“Really?” Eddie asks.

“Oh, yeah, absolutely,” Richie says. "Even when I couldn't remember you, I think you were my little Jiminy Cricket conscience. You know, the little voice in the back of my head, telling me what the right thing to do is?"

"I'd rather not be," Eddie says.

"You're little like he is," Richie tells him. The heavy weight that had been settled on his shoulders when Eddie first came in the room has mostly disappeared; he seems a lot lighter, head higher, eyes brighter.

"You're such an ass," Eddie says. He swats Richie's shoulder before he stands from the guest bed. "Do you still want to go for a drive today? Feeling up to it?"

"Takes more than a bad dream to shake me," Richie says. "Wanna gimme a hand?"

"As long as you only need the one," Eddie replies, and Richie laughs, genuine and unexpected like it's startled out of him.

"You've got  _ everything _ I need, Spaghetti Man," Richie tells him. Eddie tries — and fails, he thinks — to fight the blush down off his face.

Eddie gives Richie his hand when he stands from the bed and helps him do the same. He seems like he's in less pain than he was yesterday, which Eddie takes as a win. "Will you be alright in the car, or would you rather a walk? Because if you don't want to sit that long, we can just take a walk down to the farmers’ market together."

Richie considers this as he stands and stretches. Eddie flinches when his back cracks like a gunshot, but Richie just sighs, rolling his neck to crack that, too.

"A walk actually sounds great," Richie tells him. "Maybe we can take a drive tonight. Get a nice dinner, yeah? You and me?"

Eddie feels the flare of heat spark in his spine before fire rolls through his whole body, warming him from the inside out, every inch of him. He nods before he even realizes he's moving. "Yes, that sounds— really nice. Really, really… nice, I— What were you thinking?"

"Maybe the Olive Garden in Times Square?" Richie suggests. Eddie playfully whacks his shoulder; Richie pretends to be more hurt than he is, but his play-wince makes Eddie's heart pound, for a second. "Oh, don't gimme those eyes. They're even more unsettling without your glasses on, there, big guy."

"What do you mean?" Eddie asks.

"I mean  _ this,"  _ Richie says, and covers Eddie's eyes with one big hand. Eddie laughs, pushing him away. "You can't hurt me."

"I mean," Eddie says. "I  _ can." _

"You wouldn't," Richie says, "so you can't."

Eddie studies him for a moment. His eyes track down, only to remind him that Richie's only got boxer shorts on. His breath catches in his throat, his chest abruptly tight. He forces his eyes back up to meet Richie's.

"I'll give you half an hour to shower and get ready," Eddie tells him. "I'll make coffee, and we can stop for breakfast on the way."

"King of kings, man after my own  _ heart,  _ Eddie, I  _ love  _ you," Richie declares, loud and boisterous as he sweeps Eddie up in his arms and plants a kiss on the crown of his head. Eddie feels clammy now, heart pounding.

_ "Richie,"  _ Eddie admonishes, pushing him away. Richie wraps his arm around Eddie's shoulders and sighs, rattling him a bit. His big hand is warm on the bare skin of Eddie's upper arm. Like this — getting out of bed together, sleep-warm and laughing — it's almost like they're a couple. It's nice to imagine, for a second. To pretend.

In the next moment, they separate, and Eddie leaves to shower in his own bathroom, and the bubble pops.

Once he’s clean and dressed, he remembers he promised coffee. In the hall, he can hear Richie on the phone in his room again. Eddie’s hair is still curling wet-dark against his neck, dripping down the back of his shirt. For just a second, he hesitates.

"I love you, too," Richie says to the phone. Eddie's hand abruptly feels much colder; he leaves the hallway for the sanctuary of the kitchen instead.

* * *

"Where is this place, anyways?" Richie asks. He's got a slight limp, Eddie realizes, now that he knows what to look for. Eddie had made them sit down to eat breakfast in the little diner on the way to the marketplace, though, so Richie seems like he's not in as much pain as he could be this far into their walk.

"Only a bit longer," Eddie tells him. He points, then, and says, "See there?"

Richie follows the line of his hand and says, "Oh, would you look at that," right near Eddie's ear, voice deep and close.

"It's a nice place," Eddie tells him, skin thrumming. "There’s all sorts of farmers and gardeners, but there's also cooks and crafters and carvers, all sorts of things."

Richie's eyes light up behind his glasses. Whoever told Richie that bullshit about him in his glasses is dead to Eddie, because he looks happy and charming and  _ comfortable _ in them. Eddie reaches out and squeezes Richie's wrist.

"I thought you'd like that," Eddie says. "Packrat."

"Hey,  _ hey,"  _ Richie says. "I'm only a packrat when I've kept things too long, I haven't even  _ gotten _ anything yet."

"Packrat is a permanent state of being," Eddie tells him. "It's a personality trait. You've been one since you were a boy."

"You're so—" Richie starts to say, then stops, his hands flying through mid-air. He sighs, then says, "You know what you are?  _ You _ are a one-of-a-kind, Eddie Spaghetti."

Eddie laughs, shoving at him again.  _ “You’re  _ insufferable.”

It’s a sufficient enough deflection, because Richie accepts it and moves on. They pass through the gates into the outdoor marketplace and find themselves shielded from the drizzly late-morning fog by the canopy that the tops of the stalls form over their heads. Richie drapes his arm across Eddie’s shoulders as they walk like it doesn’t mean anything. The humid summer continues on.

The place is  _ packed,  _ being it’s a Sunday and all. Eddie tries not to focus on the overwhelmed tension thrumming underneath his skin.

“You alright?” Richie asks, when they stop beside a stand full of grapefruits. “You seem nervous. You know something I don’t?”

Eddie begins to say, “I’m fine,” but Richie gives him a  _ cut the bullshit  _ look that zips straight to his chest, so he just sighs instead. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Then don’t  _ you  _ look at  _ me  _ like that,” Richie replies.

“It’s just—” Eddie starts, then stops. He rubs one eye under his glasses and tries again. “There’s just a lot of people here. I start thinking about— Well, everything, when there’s crowds like this. The germs, you know, first, but then thinking about—  _ Who  _ is in the crowd, and what if someone bad is out there? What if one of these people is It and It’s found us again? What if—”

“Hey, whoa,” Richie says lowly, turning Eddie away from the grapefruits. “I thought we were being more optimistic than this. The worst thing that could happen already happened, right? You’re all about that now! You’ve been all smiles and the power of positive thinking since I got here.”

“Well, sometimes it doesn’t  _ work,  _ Richie,” Eddie snaps, feeling a flash of anger lick up his spine into his chest, making it feel tight. He curls his hand up into a fist and closes his eyes, exhaling slowly. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Richie says. “I was kinda hoping this would happen sooner rather than later.”

Eddie laughs bitterly. “What, that I’d freak out?”

“That you’d let me in,” Richie clarifies. Eddie doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just doesn’t answer, feeling his chest tighten and his heart start to really _ race.  _ Richie seems to realize this quick and steers Eddie towards a cluster of benches and sits them down on an empty one, his hand firm and solid on Eddie’s shoulder. As soon as Eddie’s out of the crowd, he falls to the bench and puts his head between his knees, his hand going to the back of his neck and squeezing tight.

“I’m sorry,” Eddie says again, more quietly this time.

“What was that?”

“I’m sorry,” Eddie repeats, louder this time, lifting his head. Richie leans in and puts his arm around him, rattling him a bit. For a beat, Eddie waits to be angry and overwhelmed again by Richie getting too close, but the reaction doesn’t come. Instead, he feels almost— settled. Richie is like one point to focus on, one grounding anchor, one port in the fucking storm.

“Don’t you be sorry, Spaghetti Man,” Richie says. “There’s nothing to be sorry  _ about. _ There are  _ way  _ too many people here. Y’know, I think they’ll let just anybody into this place? It’s sickening. Where’s the class?”

Eddie wipes at his eyes, surprised to find them wet and irritated, and huffs an embarrassed, damp laugh. “If they had rules, you wouldn’t be allowed in.”

“And this place would be all the better for it!” Richie exclaims. Eddie laughs again, hiding his face in his hand. “Hey, Eds. It’s okay. Really. There are a  _ lot  _ of people, but I promise, none of them are that creepy old clown, okay? We killed that bastard.  _ You  _ did. As for the— I don’t know, the murderers and the germs—”

“Shut  _ up,”  _ Eddie cuts him off.

“No, no, they’re both valid concerns,” Richie assures him. Eddie laughs as Richie adds, “You can never tell when one of them is coming right at you. Both completely valid fears, Eds.”

“But I don’t  _ want  _ to be afraid anymore,” Eddie tells him. Richie doesn’t say anything right away, so Eddie lifts his head to look up at him. They’re close, closer than Eddie thought they were, but he makes eye contact with Richie anyways. “I don’t want to be— be the one who you  _ expect  _ to have some stupid breakdown over— over germs and murderers at a fucking  _ farmers’ market,  _ Richie. I’m— I’m an adult, what am I  _ doing?  _ What the hell am I so afraid of?”

“Big questions for before noon on a Sunday,” Richie comments. Eddie laughs dryly and starts to pull away. “Hey, no, Eds, wait, I’m sorry.”

“I shouldn’t have—”

“You should,” Richie cuts him off. He tugs Eddie back into his side on the hard wooden bench and tells him, “I’m not a therapist or anything, Eds, but, looking at the common denominators here, you’re afraid of— Dying, maybe? I don’t know. Are you afraid of dying?”

Eddie covers his eyes with his hand again and hides his face in Richie’s shoulder. “You can’t just—  _ ask  _ me if I’m afraid of dying, Richie. We’re in public.”

“Are you?” Richie asks anyway, rubbing Eddie’s back.

“Am I?” Eddie echoes. “Am I scared of  _ dying?  _ Yes, of  _ course.  _ Isn’t  _ everybody?” _

“Not all the time,” Richie tells him.

“Don’t—”

“Hey, that’s not what I mean, Eds, I’m being serious,” Richie says. “Of course I don’t want to  _ die,  _ I just don’t think about all the ways I could die all the time.”

Eddie doesn’t know what to say to that. He knows, logically, that most people don’t do what he does. He also hasn’t brought it up with his therapist because he’s pretty sure this is just how he is, now, and there’s not much he can do to change that, at this point. It’s gone beyond problems with his mother, though he does have those in spades; it’s become an entire tangled mess inside of him, and he doesn’t know how to sort it out. He doesn’t know if it  _ can  _ be sorted.

“You aren’t like me,” Eddie settles on saying, chest tight again. He wants his inhaler, but he forces himself to leave it at home, now. His hand falls to his lap and his fingers clench around nothing.

“Like what?” Richie asks.

“Like  _ me,”  _ Eddie repeats. “You’re not like— like  _ this,  _ you’re— You’re  _ you.” _

Richie slips his hand into Eddie’s and lets his fingers wrap around him instead. Eddie takes a deep breath, exhaling slowly. “Yeah, I am me, Eds. And I think you’re a pretty impressive guy. Everyone’s got their shit, that doesn’t outweigh all the good stuff. Like, you’ve got your own place now? And your own business, and you’re doing all this self-improvement shit and adapting to your new life so well and— Eddie, I don’t think you get that I want to be  _ like  _ you.”

“No, you don’t,” Eddie says automatically. He shakes his head and looks away.

“Hey,” Richie says. “Yes, I do. Don’t tell me what I want.”

“I always wanted to be like  _ you,”  _ Eddie tells their joined hands in his lap. He huffs a laugh and says, “Christ, Richie, what are we  _ doing?” _

“Getting worked up in a farmers’ market,” Richie tells him. Eddie hides his face in Richie’s shoulder again, his glasses digging in at an angle. Richie doesn’t complain, though. “It’s alright, though. I saw two teenage girls crying on our way over here.”

“Oh, you  _ suck,” _ Eddie says.

“I do,” Richie agrees easily. The arm he had around Eddie’s shoulders slips up; his hand leaves his back to thread through Eddie’s hair instead, scratching his scalp. “Do you wanna go back to your place?”

Eddie considers the offer. He does want to go back, but he wants more to be able to do this. He sighs, then relaxes, inch by inch. The tension slips from his shoulders as Richie keeps scratching through his hair.

“We can stay longer,” Eddie says. Richie nods, but he doesn’t make a move to stand just yet. Eddie appreciates it; he keeps using him as a headrest, the slight humid mist of the air settling over their skin everywhere it’s exposed. Richie keeps rubbing a small circle into the back of Eddie’s hand with his thumb, and it’s somehow the most intimate sensation Eddie thinks he’s felt to date. He feels exposed and raw, face buried in Richie’s shoulder, his whole body burning with heat inside and out.

“I’m sorry,” Eddie repeats.

“For the love of—  _ Eddie,”  _ Richie says. “If you tell me you’re sorry one more time, Spaghetti Man, I’m gonna clobber you, I swear. C’mere.”

Richie wrestles him closer, planting a kiss on his temple. He rubs his hand through Eddie’s hair quickly, ruffling it before he reaches down and adjusts his glasses for him.

“Better?” Richie asks.

“Much,” Eddie says, and pulls away to stand. He tells himself he only withdraws first because he wants to offer Richie his hand to stand up, but the truth is his hand is sweating and his pulse is racing and he doesn’t know how much longer he can be this close to Richie without wanting to do  _ something. _

“Where to next?” Richie asks. He’s leaning on Eddie, his arm across his shoulders again. Eddie takes a deep breath and focuses on Richie as an anchor instead of as a threat; he’s more grounded, this time, as they melt back into the stream of people flowing from stall to stall.

Eddie maneuvers them through the crowd to a sculptor’s tent. It’s relatively empty, so they duck inside.

“Is this your new secret passion?” Richie asks quietly as they survey a shelf of shapeless statutes. “Are you an art critic by night?”

“No,” Eddie replies. “But if I was, I don’t think I’d leave a glowing review here.”

Richie snorts a laugh that he has to choke down and muffle behind his hand. Eddie smacks his chest.

“I can’t take you  _ anywhere,”  _ Eddie admonishes him, turning away. He lays eyes on a barrel stood in the corner of the tent. “Oh.”

“What?” Richie asks. He looks up to Eddie’s face, then follows his eyeline. “Oh, uh— Hm. What about them?”

Eddie slips out from under Richie’s arm to cross the small aisle to the barrel. He tugs out one of the handcrafted wooden canes inside, choosing one of the tallest ones on instinct.

“I don’t think that’ll work for you, Eds,” Richie tells him.

“No, for  _ you,”  _ Eddie says, even though he knows Richie knows that. “What am I going to do with this, climb it? Take it.”

Richie does as told, taking the cane into his hand. It’s just the right height.

“Lean on it,” Eddie says. Richie does, and the cane takes his weight easy. “Try walking with it, how do you feel?”

Richie goes down the aisle and back, his face getting pink, then red. Eddie starts digging through the rest of the canes, only half-paying attention to them as he watches Richie.

“Hey, look,” Eddie says, pulling one of the canes free. It nearly exactly matches the one in Richie’s hands, just nearly half its height.

“I don’t think that one is a better option, to be honest,” Richie tells him. Eddie swats at him. “Can I stop, by the way? This is mortifying.”

“Yes, please, stop,” Eddie says. He leans his own weight on the cane in his hand. “These are actually nice.”

Richie doesn’t say anything. Eddie takes a few experimental steps with the cane in his own hands, taking him right up to Richie’s chest. Richie’s immovable, though.

“What?” Eddie asks, looking up into Richie’s eyes.

Richie hesitates. Then, he asks, “When did we get so old, Eds?”

“Speak for yourself,” Eddie tells him. He turns and walks the cane back to the barrel. “I’m just as young as ever, I just had my kneecaps shattered by a clown. Statistically speaking, that’s an outlier.”

Richie laughs, bright and startled, seeming lighter than he had minutes before. He lifts the cane over his head and, to Eddie’s delighted embarrassment, shouts to the owner of the stall, “How much for these?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was originally twice as long so I cut it in half, so you'll have another chapter in like twelve seconds


	5. hit the ground running

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What, am I a giant? I don’t fit in normal cars?” Richie asks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and voila! the second half

“Are you sure you’ll be comfortable enough in my car?” Eddie asks. “Because I can borrow one of the company cars.”

“I’m comfortable in anything, Eds, I told you,” Richie says. He smooths his hair back in his reflection in the mirror by the front door while Eddie ties his shoes with his hand and his teeth. “I’m going to be in the passenger seat regardless, aren’t I?”

“I suppose,” Eddie says. “But the legroom—”

“What, am I a giant? I don’t fit in normal cars?” Richie asks.

_ “Yes,” _ Eddie tells him. Richie waves him off, laughing.

“You were kind of an engine nut when we were kids,” Richie recalls. Eddie finally gets his first shoe tied and moves onto the second. He’d insisted on wearing his nice shoes,  _ then  _ insisted he didn’t need help tying them. Truth was, he’d forgotten they even needed  _ to  _ be tied, but he wasn’t about to admit that. “Didn’t you enter a, uhh… A soapbox race? Or something?”

“A few of them,” Eddie says.

“And you fixed up that shitty truck in high school.” Richie comes over to stand in front of him. “Let me help you with that.”

“That truck was  _ not  _ shitty,” Eddie argues. “And, no. I got it.”

“Gonna smash this jar?” Richie asks. Eddie sighs, but he concedes, leaning back and letting Richie kneel and tie his shoe for him. “You always impressed me with that stuff, the mechanic stuff, you know. I didn’t know any of it. Cars look cool, and I like to drive them, but I don’t get how they work like you do. You’ve just got one of those brains, Eds.”

“Says our class valedictorian,” Eddie teases.

“No, I’m serious,” Richie tells him. “Let me compliment you, Eddie, damn it.”

“I refuse,” Eddie says. The two of them stand, and Eddie dusts himself off, straightening his button-down shirt. Another with the sleeve stitched up, neater this time; he did it himself just the week before. The rose-pink of the thread blends seamlessly with the shirt.

“Can you still make your way anywhere without a map?” Richie asks. “Because  _ that  _ always impressed the living  _ fuck  _ out of me, I’ll be honest with you.”

“You’re a sap.”

“Well, welcome to the forest,” Richie says. Eddie laughs as Richie tugs him in for a hug, kissing the top of his head and ruffling his hair again. Eddie lets himself hug back just for a moment before pushing them apart. Just then, he gets an idea.

“If you’re really impressed by all that, do you want to see what I’ve been working on?” Eddie asks. Richie nods eagerly, grinning. His face has been changing, slowly, even in the few days he’s been here. His shadowed jaw is starting to grow steadily into an auburn beard, nearly matching up with his mustache, now; he looks a little less tired, his eyes green and shining bright behind his big glasses, and his hair’s started to curl and fall down into his eyes, down to his face, twisting against his neck. He looks happier, Eddie thinks, unless he’s just projecting, or too hopeful. He  _ does  _ hope Richie is happier here, though.

Maybe even happy enough to stay.

_ Stop. _

“Let’s go,” Richie says, so Eddie does, locking the front door to  _ his  _ apartment behind them. They take the elevator down to the garage basement level Eddie’s car is on. Richie starts to head for Eddie’s parking spot, once they’re let out, but Eddie heads in the opposite direction.

“Follow me,” Eddie tells him. Richie’s cane clicks against the cement ground as he catches up to Eddie, falling into step beside him.

“Is it cool?” Richie asks.

“Is it  _ cool?”  _ Eddie echoes. “Yes, I think so. Hopefully you do, too.”

They stop next to Eddie’s other car, and Richie seems confused for a second. He looks around, then down at the car.

“Is— This one?” Richie asks. Eddie nods, and Richie surveys it in shock. “Is this a fucking T-bird, Eds?”

“It is,” Eddie says. He runs his hand over the seam of the hood where it meets the gleaming red of the body proper. “I found it in the papers at an auction a few years ago, a total mess. I was keeping it behind my old house, but— Well, things changed. I’ve been working on it down here when I get the chance, now and then.” He motions around them. “These are the spare spots for the residents here.”

“You’re  _ rebuilding  _ it?” Richie asks. “This is  _ rebuilt?” _

“Yup,” Eddie says. His face feels hot; he sticks his hand in the pocket of his pants to dry it. “Cool enough for you?”

Richie laughs incredulously. He turns to Eddie, pointing to the car. “This is the coolest fucking thing I’ve ever  _ seen,  _ Eddie Spaghetti. You’re holding out on us!”

“It’s not my fault you make presumptions about me,” Eddie scolds him. “Now, let’s go back to my actual car. This one isn’t exactly road-worthy yet, and I’m hungry.”

“Your wish is my command,” Richie says, and offers Eddie his arm. Eddie rolls his eyes, but he does take it. He’s abruptly glad he’s feeling well enough to have left his own new cane upstairs. Richie makes him feel much more secure anyways.

“What do you want for dinner?” Eddie asks, once they’re buckled into his Jaguar and Richie is fiddling with the radio.

“Whatever you want is fine,” Richie tells him. “Do you have a place in mind?”

“I’m a driver,” Eddie reminds him. “I have  _ every  _ place in mind.”

“That’s right.” Richie stops fucking with the dials and leans back against his headrest to look at Eddie instead. “Well, I’m not a vegetarian.”

Eddie considers this, then smiles. “Alright, sounds like a plan.”

“That’s it?” Richie asks.

“Do you know how many intoxicated businessmen and celebrities I pick up regularly who have no idea what’s in the city?” Eddie counters. “I’ve done more with less.”

Richie laughs. “I’m glad you didn’t know me in my more— Uhh, well,  _ intoxicated  _ is a good word for it, yeah.”

“I’ve seen it all,” Eddie tells him. After a beat, he adds, “But— Me, too. I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

“I guess I am,” Richie agrees. “Though, I gotta tell you, there would’ve been nothing better for my back and my legs than takin—”

“Beep, beep,” Eddie cuts him off, just because he gets that nervous feeling that tingles through his limbs again when Richie jokes like that. Richie glances at him, but Eddie keeps his eyes on the road. They both go quiet again until Eddie sighs. “I’m sorry. I just— You know. My mother.”

“Your mother,” Richie repeats. “In general?”

“I mean— Well, the pills, specifically,” Eddie says. Richie furrows his brow at him. “That she made me take.”

“Do you still take them?” Richie asks. Eddie sighs again.

“No,” he says. “I— No, I, I don’t, anymore. And every time I see her, she still insists I should be.”

“Your mother is a real piece of fucking work, Eds,” Richie comments.

“So’s yours.”

“It’s not a competition,” Richie replies.

“I’m  _ relating,”  _ Eddie says. He chances a smile and says, “Earth to Richie.”

“Richie’s not home,” Richie says. He knocks on the side of Eddie’s head lightly with his knuckles. “Let’s not talk about our mothers or our fathers or our addictions or our legs or my back or your hand or California or the fucking  _ clown  _ or just— Any of it. Let’s just have a night like we’re just two normal guys, alright?”

“Two normal guys,” Eddie says. “Right.”

“Hey, Eddie,” Richie says.

“Yes?”

“Think the Sox’ll win the series this year?” Richie asks, and Eddie can’t help but laugh.

“Probably not,” he says, pulling into the parking lot of the steakhouse he chose.

“Oh, ye of little faith,” Richie tells him. “You’ve never believed in them.”

“I’m realistic,” Eddie says. “Now, get out of the car, I told you, I’m hungry.”

They don’t have to wait very long, and Eddie’s grateful for that, but it does mean that they’re taken to a table for two that can  _ only  _ be described as intimate. Their knees knock together under the table when Richie leans back in his chair; they make eye contact, and Richie just grins, his legs pressing warm against Eddie’s.

Richie got himself cleaned up nice for tonight, Eddie can tell. He did the same thing — shaved the soft blonde hairs off his face, wore a button-down that he  _ knows  _ fits him nice, combed his hair as best as he could — but it’s something else to see  _ Richie  _ putting in an effort. For  _ him,  _ presumably. Eddie gets flushed all over, remembering Richie’s confession to him, that he’s queer, too. It makes his heart pound, so he grabs the menu and hides behind it to watch Richie.

Richie’s hair is combed, too, smoothed backwards and curling into itself from being pushed back by his hands too many times in the car. He’s opted for a light shirt underneath a red blazer, his shoulders wide and strong, his chest the same. Eddie drums his fingers against his menu before just deciding on the same steak he chose last time he came here and setting it aside.

The silence is strange, almost. It feels weird, too charged to break, even though Eddie wants so badly to break it. Sitting in quiet with Richie has always felt uncomfortable.

“I don’t think we have any normal things to talk about,” Eddie confesses. Richie laughs, looking up from his own menu.

“I think you’re right,” Richie says. Eddie has only one idea for a topic of conversation  _ (Who have you been talking to in your room when I’m not there?)  _ but he’s not about to bring it up, so he’s out of ideas. Lucky for him, Richie is Richie, and he immediately points out a table of three older men across the room and says, “Think they’ll have a threeway tonight?”

Eddie chokes on his inhale, a laugh bursting out of him as he exclaims,  _ “Richie,”  _ but it works. It breaks the tension and the air doesn’t feel quite so charged and heavy around their table anymore. They can order their food and get their wine and come up with absurd stories for their fellow diners. It’s like when they were in high school, sitting in the park with beers Richie paid his older sister to buy them and burgers from the diner down the road, watching the people taking late-night strolls and spinning yarns about what they could possibly be up to. Nothing has changed and yet, somehow,  _ everything  _ has changed.

The last time Eddie had been here, for example, he’d had two hands. Two hands make it considerably easier to cut a steak than just one, which Eddie has only just realized once his food actually shows up. The two of them seem to realize it at the same time, actually.

“Can I—” Richie asks, then motions for Eddie’s plate. Eddie’s chest squeezes, anxiety wrapping thorny vines around his heart, but he remembers Richie’s face earlier and the way he’d asked  _ ‘Gonna smash this jar?,’  _ and he has no choice. They swap plates so Richie can cut his steak for him. “Have you thought about getting a fake?”

“What, hand?” Eddie asks. Richie nods. “I’ve thought about it, yeah. I haven’t actually committed to anything yet, though.”

“Why not?” Richie asks. It’s just curious, not probing  _ (like his doctors)  _ or demanding  _ (like his mother).  _ Just curious.

“Because I don’t want to choose the wrong one,” Eddie answers. He laughs. “That feels ridiculous to say out loud.”

“No, that makes sense,” Richie says. “It’s like picking your own name, right? Too many options, just gimme one right away. Eliminate the guesswork.”

“That, yeah,” Eddie agrees. “And, I— Well, what’s the point? It won’t be real. Another placebo, right?”

Richie doesn’t say anything, so Eddie looks from his wine glass to Richie’s face. He seems like he’s thinking, so Eddie just waits. They’re swapping plates back when Richie says, “Sugar pills and prosthetic arms are  _ so  _ fucking different, Eds.”

“I thought we were only talking about normal things tonight?” Eddie asks.

“As you pointed out,” Richie says, “we don’t  _ have  _ any normal things to talk about.”

“Our friends,” Eddie suggests.

“Oh, yes, our friends,” Richie says. “Do you think Mike and Bill are screwing each other?”

Eddie chokes on his bite of steak and snaps, “Richie,  _ Christ,  _ at the—”

“Relax, Eds,” Richie says. “Isn’t this New York? Besides, nobody’s paying attention to us.”

Eddie looks around them. It’s true; nobody’s looking in their direction, but that doesn’t mean nobody’s listening. He lays his fork down and rubs at his forehead with his hand.

“What makes you think Mike and Bill are screwing each other?” Eddie asks. He’s thought the same thing plenty of times, but he wants to know why  _ Richie  _ thinks it. He wants to feel valid in thinking he’s not alone.

“Because they  _ are,”  _ Richie replies. Eddie raises an eyebrow at him over his glasses, and Richie huffs, smiling. “Because they live together and— Uhh, well. I don’t know. I just get that feeling off of them, I guess. What, do you not?”

“No, I do,” Eddie tells him. “I just thought I was maybe projecting.”

“Or we both are,” Richie says. “I had the  _ biggest  _ crush on Bill when I was maybe five years old, you know.”

“Did you?” Eddie asks, laughing.

“Didn’t  _ you?” _

“Of  _ course  _ I did,” Eddie scoffs. “I had a crush on Bill until I was maybe eight.”

“Ah, such is life,” Richie tells him. “Luckily, I—” He stops himself, frowns, then makes himself laugh, leaning forward to start picking at his food again.

“You what?” Eddie asks. Richie doesn’t answer, just looks up at Eddie over the edge of his glasses and takes a sip of wine.  _ “Richie.” _

“I got over Bill,” Richie tells him. Eddie’s skin breaks out in goosebumps, hand shaking. He slips it under the table to fist in his lap. “I had a crush on somebody else instead.”

Eddie wants to ask. He  _ wants  _ to. He can feel it in his throat:  _ Who?  _ or  _ Still?  _ or even, fucking forbid,  _ Me?,  _ but he can’t ask any of those. He can’t. He  _ can’t. _

_ Why not?  _ he asks himself. The answer, as always, is just  _ because. _

The two of them keep sitting in the silence, and Eddie feels like a monster, letting it drag out like this. Eventually, inevitably, he buries his face in his hand and says, “Oh, Richie.”

“Oh, Eddie,” Richie echoes, sounding a little shaky himself. Eddie doesn’t dare peek up at him.

Eddie’s heart is pounding when he asks, “Who did you have a crush on?”

“You first,” Richie says. It’s always a game with him. Eddie lowers his hand and looks Richie over, trying to find something,  _ anything,  _ in his expression that will make him feel more certain about making a confession.

Richie’s eyes meet his. Eddie’s heart trips over itself in his chest.

“I think you know,” Eddie says. It comes out quieter than he means for it to, because he’s trying to keep his voice from breaking; Richie furrows his brow.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t— Are you upset?” Richie asks. “Don’t be mad, I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about this, I guess I just thought—”

“It was you,” Eddie says.

“Yeah, I guess,” Richie says. “Sorry, I guess I shouldn’t have—”

“No, Richie, that’s—” Eddie says, then groans. His face feels flushed hot as he repeats, “It was  _ you.  _ I had a crush on  _ you.” _

Richie’s fork meets the table forcefully, and they both jump. Richie laughs, rubbing at the back of his head. “You know, Eds, I, uhh— The kid I had a crush on, real cute kid, this kid down the street.” He pauses, makes sure Eddie’s looking at him when he says, “Little Eddie Kaspbrak—”

_ “Richie—” _

“And his cute little sweaters,” Richie continues, either unaware of or unbothered by the way Eddie’s face is burning and he’s desperately shushing Richie, his heart racing. “And the way he used to tell me  _ off  _ all the  _ time,  _ good  _ gravy,  _ Eds, you  _ killed  _ me when I was in high school. You know, I think you single-handedly gave me a praise kink? It’s true, I think I just—”

“Rich,  _ Richie,”  _ Eddie cuts him off. He feels wild, like he might actually bolt from the restaurant and just run until he can’t anymore if Richie moves too suddenly. His eyes dart up to Richie’s and he says, “Do you still—” He stops, then repeats, just, “Do you still?”

Richie grins at him. Eddie feels like they’re in the middle of reading a book, but Richie’s already flipped ahead. Like he knows more than Eddie does.

“Yeah, Eds,” Richie says. “Of course I do, that’s why I’m bringing it up.”

“Is that why— why you came here?” Eddie asks. Richie taps his fingers against the table, a rumbling drum underneath the low hum of conversation in the restaurant.

“Not really,” Richie says. “I meant what I told you. I came here to get away from all the— all the shit, and to see you, since I knew you’d understand. But I also hoped— Well, I hoped maybe I could get to know you a little better in a… in a little bit of a different way.”

“Different,” Eddie echoes.

“Slightly more biblical,” Richie clarifies. Eddie thumps his shoulder over the tabletop, but it just sets Richie off grinning again. “So. Don’t leave me hanging here, Eds, what do you think?”

Eddie surveys him, desperate to verify that this is  _ real.  _ That he hasn’t slipped into a dream or a hallucination or, Jesus Christ, a fucking delusion from  _ Pennywise,  _ or that Richie’s not drugged, or that he’s actually Richie, or— or that he’s in his right mind, maybe, because how  _ could  _ he be? How could he  _ possibly  _ be?

But then, Eddie realizes, the only reason he ever comes up with to say  _ no  _ to everything is  _ because.  _ Why  _ can’t  _ he be with Richie? Hell, why can’t he  _ try?  _ Richie’s not getting on one knee and offering up his hand in marriage, as much as the idea makes Eddie’s legs feel weak and his arm sweats. He’s asking what Eddie thinks about a crush Richie’s got on him. That’s all.  _ What’s the harm in trying? _

His brain swarms the question, offers a million and one  _ what ifs,  _ but Richie’s voice, like his own little subconscious Jiminy Cricket, cuts through it all.

_ The worst thing that could happen already happened. _

Losing each other already happened. Eddie only has to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“I think it’s not the worst thing you’ve ever been able to talk me into,” Eddie tells him. Richie reaches across the table and puts his hand over Eddie’s, freckled face flushing pink. His eyes shine in the low light and bright overhead fixture, dangling close, just half a foot above their heads, casting his profile in shadow.

“Not by far,” Richie says. He squeezes Eddie’s hand; Eddie flips it over and squeezes back. “Can I kiss you?”

“Richie—”

“Not  _ here,”  _ Richie tells him. “What, across the table? I want to make this kiss  _ good,  _ Eds.” His brow furrows, and he asks, too serious, “Have you kissed someone before?”

Eddie flushes.  _ “Yes,  _ I have kissed someone before,  _ Richie.  _ I just haven’t— You know.”

“Got a hole in one?” Richie asks.

_ “Richie,”  _ Eddie snaps.

“It’s okay,” Richie says. “I think there’s a certain pride in being the first dick you see.”

Eddie frowns. “What makes you think it’s the first I’ve seen?”

“You said you’re a virgin,” Richie says, frowning right back. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I mean, I—” Eddie starts to say, then stops. “I’ve done— I’ve done other things. Just because I’m a virgin doesn’t mean I’ve done  _ nothing.” _

“That’s  _ exactly  _ what being a virgin means, Eds,” Richie hisses. His grin is back, though, and it’s doing  _ insane  _ things to Eddie’s insides. He feels like he’s melting apart. “What  _ have  _ you done?”

Eddie shrugs, bewildered, and says, “I don’t  _ know,  _ I’ve— You know.”

“I  _ don’t  _ know,” Richie says. Even his  _ ears  _ are red. “Enlighten me.”

Eddie sighs. “I— You know, I’ve—” He lowers his voice and says, “Used my mouth—”

_ “Edward,”  _ Richie cuts him off. “That is  _ sex.” _

“But we didn’t—”

“Tell me this guy’s name, I’ll kick his ass for you,” Richie says, rolling up his sleeves. Eddie laughs.

“For  _ what?”  _ he demands.

“For not treating you right,” Richie says. “Eds,  _ that’s  _ sex. I mean, there’s a lot of different things sex can be. Virginity’s all horseshit anyways.”

Eddie studies Richie’s face. Richie studies him right back, their eyes meeting in the middle; Richie’s smile widens. It makes Eddie’s pulse race, his palm slick, and he doesn’t know if the feeling is good or bad. It almost feels like fight or flight, and he wants to just hide under the table.

Instead, he settles on, “I— I don’t know if I’m ready for all of that, but I want to kiss you,” and Richie blushes again. It’s so  _ easy  _ to bring the red up to Richie’s fair skin; Eddie wants to keep doing it, just to see what works and what doesn’t. He wants to get to know Richie, he realizes, actually know  _ him,  _ everyone he’s been and who he’s become and who he wants to be.

“Then let me kiss you,” Richie says, and turns to stop the waitress and ask for their check.

* * *

The air in the apartment feels charged with energy all over again. It had in the car on the drive back, too, and in the elevator on the way up; Eddie feels like a rubber band pulled too taut, about to snap from too much tension.

The second the apartment door clicks shut behind him, though, Richie says, “Is it okay if I kiss you now?” and Eddie breathes a sigh of relief.

He checks to make sure the door is locked before he turns to Richie and says,  _ “Yes.” _

Richie drops his wallet on the side table so both of his hands are free to surge up and cup Eddie’s face. He studies him for a moment in the orange overhead light of the hallway, their faces only inches away, before he tips his head to the side and drops it down, letting their lips meet.

Eddie’s breath catches in his throat, his eyes slipping shut as his hand slithers up to cup the back of Richie’s head. He shifts his weight so he can lean into the kiss, turning his chin up and giving as good as he gets. Richie’s all heat against him, his grip sliding to Eddie’s hips to hold him close there.

_ “Fuck,”  _ slips out of Richie’s mouth when they separate, and a bolt of lust shoots down from the back of Eddie’s throat down to the base of his spine. He yanks Richie back in for another kiss, pushing him backwards until he gets them into his living room. The sofa they’d fallen asleep on so recently looks inviting and spacious enough for them, so he breaks the kiss to guide Richie down to it.

“Are you sure this is okay?” Eddie asks, hand drifting over Richie’s face, his shoulder, his chest, then fluttering up before it can go down any further.

“This is  _ more  _ than okay,” Richie assures him. He cups Eddie’s face in his hands and asks, “Are  _ you  _ sure this is okay? I’m not making you uncomfortable? Because you can tell me right now and I’d fuck right off, Eddie, I swear. No hard feelings.”

“Richie,” Eddie says, softly, nearly admonishing. Richie’s eyebrows furrow together, and Eddie reaches up, nudging his glasses down his nose a bit so he can smooth away the divot carved between his eyes. “I want this. I want  _ you,  _ you don’t need to doubt that.”

“I’ve spent my entire  _ life  _ doubting that,” Richie tells him, making Eddie’s heart  _ race. _ “What was it you said before? Some things are just a permanent state of being or a personality trait.”

“Being a  _ packrat,  _ yes,” Eddie reminds him. “Doubting whether or not your best friend likes you or not is kind of ridiculous, don’t you think?”

“Is that what we are?” Richie asks.

“I haven’t seen you in decades,” Eddie says. “I don’t know what we are.”

“I don’t know why we’re  _ talking,”  _ Richie says, and surges forward to kiss Eddie again. Eddie sighs involuntarily, the sound just slipping from his mouth as he parts his lips, and Richie groans. His kiss deepens, until Eddie’s shivering and hungry; he slips his tongue into Richie’s mouth first, just to see what it’ll feel like, and nearly groans himself. He manages to keep himself quiet the first time, but when Richie pulls back to nip at his lower lip and lick into his mouth again, he can’t help the moan that falls from him.

Eddie turns himself around so he’s facing Richie where he’s sitting on the couch, lining himself up all along Richie’s side and pushing him sideways into the cushions at an angle. He can kiss him easier like this, all their weight supported; with his hands free, Richie’s free to roam over Eddie’s back, up into his hair, across his shoulders.

Eddie kisses the corner of his mouth, then across and up, to his nose, his cheek, his forehead, then back down to his lips. He smiles there before kissing him again, hard, their glasses knocking together and nose pressed to nose. Richie laughs into it, and Eddie feels a block of ice start to melt in the back of his chest. There doesn’t have to be more than this, right now; just this is enough, and the rest can come later, he decides.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god i'm obsessed with this story right now


	6. the road to hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Richie?” Eddie calls. There’s a clatter from the kitchen and a muffled curse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 😔 sorry!!

Richie got up from the couch about twenty minutes ago, and he still hasn’t come back.

He didn’t offer an explanation of where he was going or what he was doing. At first, Eddie didn’t question it. He just kept watching _Cheers_ until the episode was nearly over; it’s not until the plot starts wrapping up that Eddie sits up and looks over his shoulder. The clock blinks _8:53._

“Richie?” Eddie calls. There’s a clatter from the kitchen and a muffled curse.

“I’ll be there in a second!” Richie shouts to him. The room had been dark and quiet before, filled only with the inhuman murmur of dialogue on the screen and the fuzzy static of the television humming beneath.

“Are you okay?” Eddie asks, voice raised. Richie doesn’t answer; Eddie mutes the television and stands. “Rich?”

“No, stay there!” Richie shouts to him. ‘C’mon, Eds, trust me here—”

"What are you _doing?”_ Eddie demands. Richie’s silent again. _“Richie.”_

"Okay, fine,” Richie says, barely audible from the distance. “Fine, Eds, come in here, if you wanna know so bad.”

A smile creeps onto Eddie’s face subconsciously. He leaves the television on mute and shuffles in his sock feet to find Richie in the kitchen.

“Oh, _Richie,”_ Eddie says in a rush. The sink, the counter, the stove, the microwave — everything is a complete mess, Richie included. Eddie hides his laugh behind his hand. “What _is_ that?”

Richie groans, shaking a glob of something off his hands onto the counter. “Uhh— Marshmallow, mostly. And banana and chocolate.”

“What the hell were you doing?” Eddie asks, laughing openly now. Richie’s shirt, his face, his _hair, everything_ is covered in whatever sticky concoction he’s managed to come up with.

“I thought it’d be nice to like— make you dessert or something, I don’t know,” Richie tells him. “I _told_ you, I only really eat takeout. That’s for a _reason.”_

“And what kind of dessert were you trying to make here, exactly?” Eddie asks.

“It was supposed to be like… mousse?” Richie asks more than says. “Or pudding. I remembered an old recipe— Well, I _thought_ I remembered an old recipe of my aunt’s, but then it melted, as you can see here—” Richie points to a sticky mess next to the sink. “So I thought, well, maybe then I could make, like… I don’t know, hot chocolate but with marshmallow _in_ it? It didn’t work.”

Eddie blinks, then exhales, looking the room over. He can’t help the grin on his face when he asks, “Well, did you make anything?”

Richie grins, advancing on Eddie so quickly that Eddie can’t even take two steps backwards. Before he can turn, Richie’s grabbed him around the waist with one arm and is using his other hand to smear _whatever_ is on his hand down Eddie’s face. Eddie shrieks, writhing to escape, but Richie’s grip is a tight vice around him.

 _“Richie!”_ he shouts, trying to push away. Richie catches Eddie’s face in his hand, his chin cupped in Richie’s palm, and grins right in his face. Eddie’s heart trips in his chest.

“How does it taste?” Richie asks loudly, and Eddie laughs again. Richie pulls away just enough for Eddie to swipe some of it off his own cheek and lick it. It’s only a beat of hesitation before he does it, too, only a _second_ where the fear of putting this into his body overwhelms him, which he counts as a win.

Eddie scrunches up his face. “Kind of terrible. How did you ruin this?”

Richie smiles, but he doesn’t answer. Instead, he just pulls Eddie in for a kiss. It tastes something like the sugary mess before it starts tasting more and more like Richie, a taste he’s starting to get more and more familiar with. A taste he’s starting to _like,_ call him crazy.

“We have to clean this up,” Eddie tells him softly, only a breath away from Richie’s lips. Richie tugs him back in and licks into his mouth, and all Eddie can think about is getting _more._ He doesn’t think anyone has _ever_ been so sufficiently distracting as Richie is.

His sticky hand cups the back of Eddie’s head, slips down to his neck, holds him tight; Eddie can’t help the edge of a moan that comes from his throat, his hand shaking as he yanks Richie closer. He feels like he can’t get close enough, wants to climb into his skin. Richie’s hard grip on him makes it seem like he feels the same way.

Heat starts pooling too heavy, too warm in the base of his spine, spreading through him, making him shiver. He breaks their kiss, shaking.

“You okay?” Richie asks. Eddie nods, breathless. Richie smoothes his sticky hand down Eddie’s back, heedless of the mess he’s making, but Eddie appreciates how soothing and grounding it is all the same.

"You really do things to me, Richie, I swear,” Eddie tells him. Richie grins, delighted. “I don’t think I can take it.”

“Oh, you can,” Richie says, so confident and assured in it that Eddie can’t help but believe him. He kisses Eddie once more, then twice; Eddie can feel him smiling still. It makes their kiss a mess, but he loves it all the same.

The word _love_ reverberates through his head and down into his chest, making his lungs feel tight and his spine ache. He pulls away from the kiss and pats Richie on his sugary cheek.

“My cleaning supplies are in the closet near the front door,” Eddie tells him quietly. Richie laughs, pecking the corner of his mouth before leaving.

Eddie stands in the middle of his disaster zone of a kitchen, looks over the mess, and realizes he vastly prefers even this to just being alone on a Tuesday night like he usually is.

“Is this useful?” Richie asks, brandishing a mop in the kitchen entryway. Eddie takes it from him and follows to help him out. He realizes belatedly, too, that he’s not sure he’s going to be able to go back to being alone. Every new taste of independence and the life he wants to have makes him _itch._ First it was leaving his mother’s house, and now _this._ He doesn’t know what he’ll do when Richie eventually leaves.

“I’m so happy you’re here,” Eddie says. Richie turns a beaming smile on him.

“Me, too, Spaghetti Man,” he replies. Eddie pushes a box of Lysol wipes into his hands.

* * *

In the other room, Richie is arguing on the phone.

Eddie's trying not to listen— Well, strictly speaking, that's not completely true. He’s pretending to himself that he's trying not to listen, but he's hanging on every word. His hand is slow as he puts on another pot of coffee, trying to keep as quiet as possible so he doesn't miss anything. Richie’s been fighting with whoever it is for well on ten minutes now, and Eddie's still not totally sure what they're even fighting _about._

"Look, Alex, when I said I wanted to—" Richie starts to say, then stops. Eddie's been picking up lots of sentence fragments from his side; whoever Alex is, whoever he's arguing with, they keep cutting him off. "No, no, actually, we discussed _exactly_ this. I said I was coming out here indefinitely and _you_ said— I _know_ that, that's why I asked you both— Well, she _is—"_

Eddie's blood feels like ice water coursing through his veins. He's just been standing in the middle of his kitchen, slowly freezing, trying to piece together what he's hearing and coming up short of any good answers. Down the hall, Richie raises his voice again.

"If that's what she wants, it's what she wants!" Richie exclaims. "No, I don't— Do _not_ say that. What the fuck is— _No,_ I—"

Eddie exhales shakily.

"You're such a—" Richie starts to shout, but then he stops. Eddie fights back the urge to creep down the hall and actually _see_ what's going on. "Nothing, I'm— Nothing. I just mean— You know, you shouldn't talk to her like that. She's—"

Eddie's brow furrows. Some person keeps coming up between him and whoever Alex is, some girl Richie seems to give a shit about, but Eddie doesn't know who either of these people are. His best guess is that they're friends from back home, maybe— or, rather, back in L.A. Eddie doesn't know what Richie considers his home. He knows that Richie told him he’s gay, _or something like it,_ and now he’s haunted realizing that Richie might have someone back in California waiting for him.

"She can come here whenever she wants," Richie says. Eddie wants to _scream._ He tells himself again that whoever this is, they're probably just a friend from back there. Back in L.A., where Richie is rich and famous and well-known and has lots of friends who get upset when he leaves, because of _course_ they do. Eddie would be— _will_ be— devastated when Richie leaves. But, everybody does; he's ready for the inevitable, at least. This is _Richie,_ anyways; he wouldn’t lie to Eddie about something like that, right?

 _You don’t know him,_ the voice of his subconscious that sounds nothing like Richie tells him traitorously. _You don’t really know him. Maybe he’d lie to you. Maybe he’d lie to her—_

 _"Yes,_ she can," Richie says. "If that’s what she wants, hell, I’m all for it! She told you _and_ I told you that _before_ I left and I— _Yes,_ that’s not a pr— _No,_ I'm— I’m just in a hotel, I can switch to a hotel room with more room. That’s not a problem right now.”

Eddie nearly slams his mug down on the counter, startling himself from the force of it. His hand is shaking; whoever Alex is, Richie _is_ lying to them. He told them he's staying in a hotel room when he's with Eddie, living in _his_ apartment and eating meals with _him_ and making out with _him._

Eddie realizes, with horrible, abrupt clarity, exactly what's going on.

He doesn't let himself listen to the rest of the conversation. Instead, he turns on the radio Richie left abandoned on the kitchen table, twisting the volume knob up most of the way to drown out any sound that isn't two feet away from him. Richie's left all sorts of things all over, actually, in the few days he's been here, but looking at it all right now just makes Eddie's chest sting.

His heart hammers in his chest as oldies rock blasts through the speakers and hot coffee blisters his hand through his mug. His brain is spinning trying to come up with anything, _anything_ this could mean besides the obvious. He just keeps circling back around.

Richie comes in when he’s a healthy few minutes into his breakdown, staring silently down into his cooling coffee on the counter as his chest heaves and his hand shakes. He can hear that Richie’s breathing heavily, too, still angry as he storms into the room, but his demeanor seems to change completely once he actually catches sight of Eddie.

“Hey, Eds, what’s up?” Richie asks. “You okay?”

Eddie wants to answer, he _does,_ but the words are trapped in his chest, at the very bottom of his throat. He feels like he’s choking. Instead of speaking, he just nods, trembling.

“You look like you saw a ghost. What’re you—”

He stops, abruptly, only a foot away from Eddie, if that. Maybe even half a foot. He’s not that far away.

“I’m sorry if you had to hear any of that,” Richie says, voice low. He doesn’t sound joking or teasing in the slightest, no lilt to his voice, nothing. It’s something Eddie’s only heard from him a handful of times, and it makes him want to just walk right out of the room and not look back. He knows nothing good can come from the rest of this conversation. He _knows_ it.

“It’s fine,” Eddie chokes out. “I— Who was that.”

It doesn’t come out as a question. Richie circles around in front of him, but Eddie can’t find it in himself to lift his head. He just keeps staring past Richie to his mug sitting on the counter.

“It’s an old ex-girlfriend of mine,” Richie tells him. “We were together, like— Literally ten years ago now.”

Eddie furrows his brow, confusion prompting him to look up more than anything else. “Why are you talking to her all the time?”

“It’s not—” Richie starts to say, then stops, sighing. “It’s just— It’s complicated, Eds. I promise I’ll explain eventually, alright?”

Eddie frowns. His heart’s pounding and his thoughts are racing a mile a minute; he tries to get them into some semblance of order, fails, and ends up just saying, “Not really.”

Richie’s silent. Then, he asks, “What?”

“It’s not _really_ alright,” Eddie repeats, more firmly this time. He looks up to Richie and says, “You lied to them, and you lied to _me._ I thought—” Eddie shakes his head, throat closing up tight. He feels dizzy. “Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter—”

“Yes, it _does_ matter, Eddie, don’t just shut down on me,” Richie says. “I thought we had a good thing going here.”

“So did I,” Eddie snaps, finally looking up to meet Richie’s eyes. He’s not sure what he means to ask, but it’s not what comes out of his mouth, which is, “Why don’t you trust me?”

Richie seems bewildered by the question, too. His hair’s a mess, Eddie only just notices, and it looks like it’s from running his fingers through it. Eddie’s bitterly glad that Richie seems as agitated as he feels. “I trust you, Eds.”

“Well, clearly not,” Eddie exclaims. He motions backwards towards the hallway, towards the phone and whoever is back in California waiting for Richie. “Because you’re lying to my _face,_ Richie.”

“I’m—”

“Why are you here?” Eddie demands. Richie looks completely baffled by the question. “Richie, _why are you here?”_

“Because I wanted to see you,” Richie says.

“Is that the truth?” Eddie asks. He backs away from Richie only because his legs are shaking now, too, and he wants to sit down at the kitchen table. He lets his head fall heavily into his hand, rubbing at his temples, as soon as he’s seated.

“Of course it’s the truth,” Richie tells him. He waits until Eddie’s sitting down before he approaches again, taking the seat next to him.

“Who were you talking to?” Eddie asks.

“My ex-girlfriend,” Richie says again.

“About _what?”_ Eddie asks. Richie hesitates again, his mouth opening before his jaw clenches shut, and Eddie laughs, burying his face in his hand. “Jesus Christ—”

“It’s not anything like that—”

“Then what _is_ it like, Richie?” Eddie demands. “Because you’re not telling me _anything._ What am I _supposed_ to think?”

“You’re supposed to trust me,” Richie says. Eddie’s head snaps up.

“I’m sorry, _I’m_ supposed to trust _you?”_ Eddie asks. “I trust you too fucking _much,_ Richie. You don’t fucking trust _me._ You—”

“You don’t know anything about—”

“Then _tell me,”_ Eddie interrupts him. The two of them stare at each other over the kitchen table. _“Tell me,_ Richie. No matter what it is.”

Richie goes quiet again. Eddie doesn’t let him drop his gaze, makes sure his eyes stay fixed on him. Every brain cell that Eddie’s got in his head is screaming at him to apologize, to take it all back, to tell Richie he’s not upset and that he can do whatever he wants and he won’t bring it up again, but that’s— that’s _not_ what he’s supposed to do anymore. It never _was._ It’s just— His fucked-up brain telling him to smooth things over so nobody’s upset, but _he’s_ the one upset, and he feels he has every _right_ to be upset.

Even though his heart’s pounding and his hand is sweating, now, Eddie says, “Richie, if you’re not going to be honest with me, I, I— I can’t do this.”

“Do what?” Richie asks quietly. Eddie puts his hand on the table and taps his nails on the wooden tabletop.

“This,” Eddie replies. His thoughts fuzz out and he stops thinking, starts just _acting,_ and says, “If you can’t trust me, Richie, and you’re— you’re keeping secrets from me, and you have some girlfriend that you—”

“She’s not—”

“Let me _finish,”_ Eddie snaps. He draws his fist down into his lap and stares down at it. “I’ve heard you talking on the phone, and I know— I _know_ there’s someone back in California, and I thought maybe it was— That she was a friend, or something, but I—” Eddie throws his hand up and pushes himself to his feet again, pacing to one end of the kitchen, then the other. “I don’t know what in _God’s name_ I thought, but _clearly_ that’s not the case, because you won’t even tell me what the hell is going on and I’ve spent _too much_ goddamn time trying to get over all the— all the—” Eddie waves his hand in a staticky, tangled motion near his head. “All _this_ that’s just been getting worse and worse and _worse_ since I had to leave Derry the first time, and, _God,_ I’m _finally_ doing better, and then when you came I thought that I could finally have _everything.”_

“Eddie,” Richie says, voice cracking. Eddie doesn’t slow, but the backs of his eyes begin to burn, too, and he swipes hastily at his cheeks with the side of his hand.

“I should’ve known,” Eddie says quietly. He scuffs his heels on the tile. “I knew you’d leave eventually, but I thought I’d have at least until then. I should’ve _known.”_

Richie’s chair screeches as he pushes it back to stand again. “Hey, that’s _not_ fair, you don’t know _what_ I wanted to do.”

“And whose fault is that?” Eddie demands, glad, in a twisted way, to finally have Richie fighting _back._ “You don’t tell me _anything._ You show up here and we have a fun time together, sure, and you like to kiss me and tell me you like me, and then what? You go back to your regular life again and I’m left here alone like before.”

“I’m alone, too, Eds,” Richie reminds him.

“Don’t call me that,” Eddie says. “And clearly not.”

They glare at each other from across the kitchen, both silent. When it gets to be too much, too overbearing and too heavy on Eddie’s shoulders, he turns away, putting his hand down on the counter. He slides it until he’s gripping the very edge, squeezing until his knuckles go white.

“You can stay here as long as you want,” Eddie says, because it feels important that Richie knows this, even now. “You’re one of my best friends and nothing will change that. But I c— I _can’t_ do— I can’t do more than that with you if you don’t—” Eddie exhales roughly, covering his eyes with his hand.

“So, just like that?” Richie asks. “Just like that, you’re done?”

 _“You’re_ not telling me the truth,” Eddie snaps. He shoves his hand through his hair, eyes fixed on the countertop. “If you just— If— _Christ,_ just— Why won’t you _tell me?”_

“Because I’m scared, Eddie,” Richie explodes. “Hell, I’m fucking— I am _terrified,_ and you have _no_ idea—”

 _“Then tell me!”_ Eddie shouts again. He turns around and looks Richie in the eye and begs him, “Please. _Please._ What are you afraid of?”

“I don’t want you to be angry,” Richie says, “or to think less of me, or to have this be the thing that fucks it all up, Eds, I swear, it’s not what you’re thinking, but I just— I need more time to figure out, okay? I swear, I just— I need more time.”

Eddie stares hard at him. After a long moment where Richie’s words only start to sink in, he nods.

“Yeah?” Richie asks. “Yeah, that’s okay?”

“Of course,” Eddie says. “But I meant what I said.”

Richie looks distraught and angry, face flushed a rough red as his eyes dart between Eddie’s. “Which part, what do you mean?”

“I mean,” Eddie says, voice finally breaking. He swallows, closing his eyes and dropping his head, sweeping his hand across his eyes again to wipe the moisture off. When he exhales, he opens his eyes again. It’s like he’s six feet above his own body. “I mean that I need you to be honest with me, and you’re not, and I can’t— We can’t be together if we can’t trust each other.”

Richie jumps a little, almost like he’s surprised, and he asks without hesitating, “We were together?”

Eddie’s heart races. He’s abruptly nauseous and wants nothing more than to leave this room and hide from society for a month at least.

“Alright,” Eddie says.

“I didn’t mean—” Richie starts to say, but Eddie can’t hear more. He _can’t._ It’s already gotten so much worse than he thought it possibly could.

“It’s okay,” Eddie says. He abandons his mug of coffee and tells Richie, “You’re welcome to stay as long as you want,” again before he leaves the room.

Eddie manages to make it to the hallway before a sob bursts out of him. He clamps his hand over his mouth to muffle it until he gets his bedroom door slammed shut behind him, but then he’s tearing his bedside lamp to the floor and crying in anger until his chest is too tight to breathe, and he briefly thinks _asthma attack_ before he remembers, _no, panic attack._

He falls down beside his bed, his back to the wall, and curls himself up into a ball, arm wrapped around his legs. His hips and his knees protest, but he doesn’t care; he’s just trying to keep his chest together in one piece.

The way Richie had asked him so point-blank, just, _We were together?,_ like he’s not— Like Eddie hasn’t been in love with him since they were children, like he didn’t _tell_ Richie _exactly_ how much having _any_ relationship means to him, _let alone_ a relationship with _him, now—_

Another sob rips up out of his throat, and he grabs his pillow off his bed to muffle it, burying his face in the soft material. His shoulders won’t stop shaking, and he distantly hears his bedroom door click open, but he can’t focus on anything besides his own racing thoughts and Richie’s voice echoing in his ears.

The real Richie doesn’t try to talk. He just sits down next to Eddie on the floor and rubs his back silently as Eddie tries to get himself under control.

“I’m sorry,” Richie eventually says. “It’s not because of you, Eds. It’s ‘cause of me. I _swear._ Nothing to do with you.”

Eddie shakes his head, face hidden in his pillow still. He lifts his head and manages to get out, “It has to do with me _now.”_

“Yeah,” Richie says quietly. “Yeah, I guess it does. I’m really sorry about that.”

Eddie doesn’t know what to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything. He just keeps his face down and hidden, trying to keep his shoulders from shaking as Richie rubs his back and he tries to feel less like a complete mess, falling apart on his bedroom floor. He leans into Richie subconsciously, hiccuping as he catches his breath.

“Sorry,” Eddie says.

“You have nothing to be sorry for—”

“I’m a grown man—”

“Yeah, and something upsetting happened, you’re allowed to—”

“Stop,” Eddie says, too tired to continue anymore. “Just— I don’t want to argue about this right now, I just want to—” He sighs, then lifts his head, rubbing at his face. His glasses had been digging into his face, and he can feel the marks they’ve left behind, imprinted on his cheeks and his temples. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I want.”

“How can I make it better, Eds?” Richie asks. “What can I do? Tell me what to do.”

Eddie shakes his head again and tips his head back against the wall. “I don’t know.”

Richie goes quiet again. The two of them sit in silence for a long, long time. Eddie doesn’t think about anything at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was gonna put more then decided to end this chapter here for now :3


	7. plus one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Stop screwing around with that or it’s not going to sit right,” Richie comments. “You’ll look all rumpled and then what? How embarrassing.”
> 
> “Shut it, Rich,” Eddie says without heat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 👁 👁

Eddie tries not to fiddle with the collar of his shirt, but it’s useless. He’s hopelessly nervous, which doesn’t help, and it’s too warm outside the diner they chose to meet up with the other Losers at for their Friday morning brunch. All of it is too fucking much and the goddamned collar feels like it’s _choking_ him.

“Stop screwing around with that or it’s not going to sit right,” Richie comments. “You’ll look all rumpled and then what? How embarrassing.”

“Shut it, Rich,” Eddie says without heat. He drops his hand to his lap anyways. The two of them have been walking around on eggshells since their fight, Eddie’s apartment feeling like a war zone at a stalemate, but the Losers are all in New York now. Everything will be okay now. It _has_ to be. Lucky Seven, back together. They’re all meeting up and they’ll be together again in just ten minutes, at most. Eddie’s heart is racing at the opportunity to just be _friends_ with them again.

“Are we going to, uhh…” Richie starts to ask, then stops. He fiddles with his cane between his knees. The two of them are sitting side-by-side on the bench, but not close enough to touch. Eddie, stupidly, still wants to scoot closer. He _wants_ to press his leg along Richie’s, to push their shoulders together, to bump into him and hold his hand and turn his head just to kiss him. He doesn’t do any of it, but, in the moment, he wants it more than he thinks he’s wanted anything else.

“Are we going to what?” Eddie asks, when Richie doesn’t elaborate further.

“Are we going to talk about us?” Richie asks. “With the others?”

Eddie frowns down at his own cane where it’s propped up beside his leg. “What about us? Like you said, we weren’t together.”

“I didn’t mean it like that, Eds,” Richie says. Again. Because he’s said it a few times since their fight yesterday, but it doesn’t change the fact that _it was said._

“Okay,” Eddie says, because it’s easier than arguing right now. “We don’t have to bring it up. I just want to enjoy them being here without them looking at me like— I don’t know, like I know they would.”

Richie goes quiet for a moment. He taps his hands against the sides of his cane, then says, “I really am sorry, I swear. I want to make things right with you. Come on, how do I fix it?”

Eddie wants to keep blowing him off with nothing answers, but Richie’s tone has weight, his voice has a deeply genuine energy, and Eddie finds himself swayed to repeat, “You can tell me the truth.”

“You know I can’t,” Richie says.

“Then you know _I_ can’t,” Eddie tells him. Richie blows out a harsh breath; in his peripherals, Eddie can see him putting his face into his hands. “It’s okay to keep secrets from me if you have to, Richie. But if you do, then this is just what I have to do for me. Okay? I need… If I’m going to be with someone who I already— If we’re going— If—” Eddie takes a second to gather himself, then says, “If I’m going to be with you, Rich, or— or anyone, then I need you— them— to trust me.”

“I do,” Richie says. “It’s because—”

“Because you think I’ll hate you,” Eddie echoes him. “Or because you think I’ll be angry, or whatever your brain’s come up with today. That’s not trusting me, you know. You’re not trusting me to react rationally or respond to this _myself.”_

Richie goes quiet again, contemplative. Eddie lets him sit in it as a rental car pulls up, honking its horn when it parks alongside Eddie’s car in the diner’s lot. Eddie stands, then turns to offer Richie a hand, too. Between Eddie’s hand and his cane, Richie stands easier than he has since they left Derry the second time.

“Look who it is!” Bill calls. “Sight for sore eyes, look at the two of you!”

“Hey, Big Bill,” Richie calls back across the lot. Bill breaks into an almost-jog and collides with Richie on the sidewalk, wrapping him up in his arms and laughing.

“Careful with him, he’s fragile now,” Eddie says. Richie flips him off while Bill laughs, pulling back to hold him by the arms.

“Hey, there,” Mike says, having followed at a reasonable pace, Audra beside him with her arm slipped through his. They detach so Mike can pull Eddie in for a tight hug. “How’re you doing, Eddie?”

“Just fine, Mike, just fine,” Eddie tells him, burying his face in Mike’s throat. He’s abandoned his cane against the bench so he can hug Mike back as hard as he can. “How are you? How was the trip up?”

“Not too bad,” he says as they separate. Audra leans in and kisses Eddie on the cheek; he feels himself flush at the contact, but she just smiles at him.

“Bill couldn’t stop talking the whole goddamned time,” Audra tells them. Bill starts to argue just as another car flies up beside them, huge and green-blue. Bev rolls down the driver’s side window.

“Where are you guys parked?” she asks. Richie goes to kiss her cheek through the window and point out where they can put themselves, Bill following behind excitedly, nearly vibrating. It hasn’t quite hit Eddie yet that it’s actually happening: that the seven of them — plus some extras, but, most importantly, the _seven of them —_ would be together again, _without_ the fear of imminent violent death hanging over their heads.

“Hey, space cadet,” Mike comments. Eddie blinks, turns to him. “Where’d you go?”

Eddie hesitates before he smiles and says, “Just thinking about how nice it is that we’re all going to be together again.”

Mike laughs and throws his arm around Eddie’s shoulders, tugging him in close. “It is nice, isn’t it? Hey, lookit there—”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Stan asks, leaning out the open window of his car, “but I was looking for a couple friends of mine. I can’t imagine you’ve seen them anywhere?”

“Stan,” Eddie says, relieved. An invisible rope of tension feels like it’s been cut from around his chest, finally letting him relax. They’re all together again, after all this time, happy and healthy and _normal._

The nine of them take up a lot of space on the sidewalk, but none of them are willing to pull their hands off of each other. Bev cups Eddie’s face in her hands and kisses him hard on the cheek as Stan collides with him from the side, all bulk and warm heat as he wraps his arms around both him and Bev at once. Eddie just sighs, trying not to let go so much that he cries all over them.

“Hey, what’re you getting all sappy for?” Richie asks, breaking them apart. Eddie huffs a laugh, just for something to do, wiping at his face. He nudges Mike away from Eddie so he can pull him into his own side, ruffling his hair. “You kept me alive until they could see me, you did your job.”

“Good work,” Stan says. “I know it couldn’t have been easy.”

“A lesser man would’ve broken,” Bill comments. “I certainly would’ve.”

Richie laughs, but Eddie prickles, for some reason. Before he can help himself, he says, “I’ve loved having Richie here, actually,” and Richie’s grip tightens on him involuntarily. Eddie feels a bolt of panic surge through his chest. He looks up to Richie, lungs tightening, but Richie’s already laughing.

“I paid him to say that,” Richie says. “C’mon, let’s go tell them we need a table for nine, really ruin their mornings.”

Bill takes the lead, guiding them inside and opening the front door for them. Richie lingers back with Eddie to grab their canes. It’s only an excuse, but Eddie’s going to take advantage of it as long as he’s got it, keeping his eyes focused down on Richie’s cane as he passes it over.

“Thanks, Eds,” Richie says, taking the cane. Their fingers brush; Eddie thinks it was purposeful, but he can’t be sure. His heart leaps into his throat all the same.

Ben’s laughing with the hostess when they catch up to the other Losers. Eddie wonders when Ben got so confident; he’s always been charming, but he was so afraid to show it. He’d shy away from talking to people like he didn’t have such kind and insightful things to say all the time. Bev looks at Ben like she’s thinking just the same thing, smiling so wide it looks like her face’ll crack.

“Hi, Eds,” Bev says when he stops next to her. She slips her hand into his, so he draws up their joined hands folded around the head of his cane so he can kiss her knuckles. “How’re you feeling?”

“Comes and goes,” Eddie tells her. “How about you?”

 _“Overwhelmed,”_ Bev says, and Eddie laughs. “Do you know how much work goes into having a baby? Because I don’t think I did. Ben’s a natural, I wish _he_ could’ve done this.”

“But you’re doing such a wonderful job,” he says. He’s about to ask if she’s had any thoughts about a name when the hostess interrupts them. She’s charmed enough by Ben not to be bothered by them asking for a brunch table for nine at the last minute, and Eddie’s grateful that he doesn’t have to have to deal with the additional layer of anxiety of their waitress hating them when she comes to take their orders.

Catching up with the Losers is so wonderful that Eddie nearly forgets about his fight with Richie. Even the two of them loosen up next to each other, losing their slightly-distant silence that they’d tried to adopt and getting launched right back into conversation with the rest of their friends. It feels nearly like it had when they were children, or when they were in Derry, before Eddie had remembered Pennywise and every horrible thing that came with It.

It’s almost like being children again, but, then, not really. Not all the way. They can’t afford to be quite so lighthearted and flippant anymore. Their topics can be fun, but they all circle back around to real world things, things that they didn’t need to think about or worry themselves over back when they were only eleven. Now, though, Bill’s concerned about the way his agent’s been talking to him about his new book, and he needs advice on how to stand up for himself. Patty talks about her new job, and how excited she is that she and Stan are trying to have a baby. It’s all so _real._

Eddie realizes, belatedly, that of _course_ it’s all real. He hadn’t realized what having adult friendships would be like, because he’s never allowed himself to have them. The only people he spends any time with are his employees and his mother. He’d thought he’d been doing a great job, moving out on his own, doing the work he wanted to do, but he realizes now just how _lonely_ he’s been this entire time. Just so _lonely._

“I’ve missed you all so much,” Eddie chances to say, when there’s a lull in the conversation. Everyone’s still got smiles on their faces from the story Richie just finished up; Eddie can feel the laughter still in the back of his own throat, even. He turns to Richie and says, voice nearly breaking, “It’s been wonderful to be back with you all again.”

“Aw, Eddie Spaghetti,” Richie says. His words sound like they should be teasing, but his tone sounds just as emotional and overwhelmed as Eddie feels. Richie tugs him into his side, ruffling his hair and kissing the top of his head.

“We missed you, too,” Bev tells him. She pulls Eddie away from Richie so she can kiss his cheek and cup his face in her hands. “I’ve missed you so, _so_ much, Eddie.” She smiles then looks to Richie and says, “I’ve missed all of you so much.”

“You gonna tell them now?” Ben asks. Bev smiles, and Eddie’s heart trips.

“Tell us what?” he asks, already assuming the worst. He sits up straighter, looking to Ben, but Bev pulls him back in to look at her.

“We’re planning on moving up here,” Bev says. Eddie’s heart jumps up into his throat. “We wanted to be closer to family when the baby got here and you guys are our family.”

“But I’m the only one who lives here,” Eddie points out. Bill laughs, and Eddie’s head snaps around to look at him across the table. _“What?”_

“She beat me to it, but, surprise?” Bill offers. “We’re moving up here. We’d talked to Bev and Ben and thought it was a good move, like she said. Closer to family.”

Eddie looks to Stan and Patty, throat thick with tears. Patty’s already beaming at him.

“We got up here last week,” Stan says. Eddie buries his face in his hand. “I was wondering if you’d ask where Pat’s new job _was.”_

“I figured she’d tell me in her own time,” Eddie says tearfully. He exhales, voice shaking as he wipes at his face with his hand. “You’re all a bunch of sons of bitches for doing this to me in public, you know.”

“I told them not to,” Richie says. “I said, take him out to dinner, wine and dine him, yeah, but then you gotta treat our Eds like a gentleman and—”

“You _knew?”_ Eddie demands. Richie cuts off sharply, looking to Eddie before he can stop himself. He forces himself to look away when Eddie twists around, though. _“Richie.”_

“I thought it’d be a nice surprise,” Richie tells him. “You’re always saying how much you miss everybody. I figured this’d make you happy.”

“You _ass,”_ Eddie hisses. He can’t help the smile that quickly slips onto his face, though. When he looks around the table at his friends, he feels overwhelmed, just— so happy he could cry, and he might, or he _is._ With a half-laugh, half-sniffle, he buries his face in his hand again.

“Aw, Eddie,” Bev says, wrapping her arm around his shoulders. Richie leans in and hugs them both tight, kissing Eddie right on the cheek like they’re _not_ in public in front of their closest friends right now. For a moment, their fight doesn’t matter, and Eddie’s terror and loneliness don’t matter, and— and, just, _none_ of it matters. All that matters is he’s _happy._

“Hi, I’m so sorry to interrupt,” their waitress says. Richie withdraws just as she asks, “Are you Richie Tozier?”

Richie grins at Eddie and turns to her to say, “I am, thank you.”

“Oh, no,” she says. Eddie laughs. “You have a phone call up at bar. Sorry, I didn’t—”

“No, you’re fine,” Richie says, over the other Losers laughing at him. He pushes back from their table and stands, telling them, “Yeah, yeah, alright, _yuck it up,_ get it out of your system.” He squeezes Eddie’s shoulder; Eddie looks up at him just in time for Richie to say, directly down to him, “I’ll be right back, alright?”

“Okay,” Eddie says. Richie squeezes his shoulder a second time before releasing him and following the waitress to the bar. The instant he’s gone, Bev grabs his wrist.

“Tell me what’s going on,” she insists. Eddie furrows his brow at her, confused, heart pounding. When he looks up to Stan for support, maybe, or at least solidarity in confusion, he’s met instead with a grin.

“What do you mean?” he asks. He looks instead to Bill, just like he used to when he was a kid, but Bill’s got his chin in his hand, smiling away.

“You and Richie seem like you’ve been getting awfully close,” Bill comments. Eddie’s heart races even faster; he feels his face heat up so quick, his cheeks burn. He looks down at his plate, picking at a leaf of lettuce with his fork just for something to do with his hand.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Eddie says.

“Aw, Eds, c’mon,” Stan says. “It’s us, you can tell us.”

“There’s nothing _to_ tell,” Eddie lies, because he doesn’t want to explain it. He doesn’t even fully understand it himself, whatever they’re doing. Right now, in this instant, he feels happy enough to forgive Richie for whatever he’s doing, but he doesn’t want to speak out of turn. Richie’s not here to confirm or deny anything, and it makes Eddie feel almost like he’s somehow invented the whole thing.

“Oh, that’s bull,” Mike comments.

“It is not,” Eddie argues.

“It so is,” Bev says. “He’s all _over_ you.”

“He’s always been all over him,” Stan points out. “In all fairness. They’ve been like this since we were kids.”

“But it’s clearer now, don’t you think?” Bev asks. “Like it makes sense.”

“Like it’s come into focus,” Ben adds. “Yeah, I get what you mean.”

“Can you stop waxing poetic about my life, please?” Eddie says. “There’s nothing to speculate about, you’re being ridiculous. Why would Richie—”

“Oh, _please,”_ Bill cuts him off.

“Don’t give us that,” Stan agrees. “When you—”

“Hey,” Richie interrupts them, appearing at their tableside like a specter. His face is totally pale, like he’s seen a ghost, and Eddie’s slamming his fork down on the table before he even knows what’s happening. “Sorry, I didn’t— I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“No, it’s okay,” Stan says. “You alright, Rich?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Richie says. He beckons to Eddie and asks, “Hey, Eds, can I talk to you for a second, please?”

“Yes, of course,” Eddie says, pushing away from the table. He remembers his cane two steps too late and just settles for wrapping his hand around Richie’s arm instead. When he chances a look back at the table, all the joy and mischief the Losers had had on their faces just moments ago is gone. In its place is the terror Eddie feels, too.

“Sorry, sorry about this,” Richie says, once they’re tucked down the hallway to the bathrooms. Eddie’s racing heart is making his hand shake where it’s tucked up with Richie’s, the two of them folded close together in the hall.

“It’s okay,” Eddie assures him. “What is it, what happened?”

“I have to go back to California,” Richie tells him. Eddie feels like his heart drops into the pit of his stomach, hearing that. “Something’s come up and I just gotta go out there right away. I’m gonna head out now and catch a cab to the airport, alright?”

“But—” Eddie starts, then stops. His mind is spinning. There’s a thousand thoughts clamoring to be the first out of his mouth, and he’s paralyzed with indecision. In the end, he lands on, “Your things, they—”

“I’ll come back,” Richie tells him.

“When?” Eddie asks. He doesn’t care how desperate his voice sounds, he’s just impressed with himself that it hasn’t cracked yet.

“I don’t know,” Richie says. “I just have to figure something out, someone needs my help, okay?”

“Richie, tell me what’s going on,” Eddie begs him. He pulls his hand free of Richie’s arms to catch his chin, forcing Richie to look down and make direct eye contact with him. Richie’s face has gone all blotchy, patched with red like it gets when he’s upset. Eddie feels like he’s going to be sick with fear and the unknown _why,_ why won’t Richie tell him, why is this happening, the _what,_ what _is this—_

“I can’t,” Richie tells him. Eddie’s frozen, just for a second, before he makes himself let go of Richie’s face. “Eds, it’s not—”

“Stop,” Eddie says, and _there’s_ the voice break he was waiting for. He claps his hand over his eyes and exhales slowly. “If you have to go, go.”

“Eddie,” Richie says. Eddie shakes his head, letting his hand fall back down to his side. The tears spill over before he can stop them, and Richie’s eyes go glassy, too, seeing them. Bitterly, vindictively, Eddie thinks, _good,_ then takes it back. He feels miserable enough as it is.

“I just didn’t—” Eddie starts to say, before his voice catches in his throat and he has to push his hand over his mouth to clamp down the sob that wants to come up. He should’ve known not to get his hopes up, he should’ve _known_ that when everything felt so goddamned good it was just about to get ripped away again. He’s not allowed to have this. He _never_ has been allowed to have this.

“I swear, it’s not you,” Richie says. He scrubs at his eyes with the back of his hand and tells him, “Eddie, I promise. I _promise.”_

Eddie shakes his head again. Richie looks over his shoulder, then twists to look over Eddie’s. Whatever he sees or doesn’t see is enough for him to duck down and catch Eddie’s face in his hands, cupping his jaw before he kisses him firmly. Eddie hates himself a little bit for leaning into the kiss and giving as good as he gets before Richie pulls away.

“I have to go,” Richie tells him. “Tell the Losers I’ll be back, okay? Just give me a couple days to figure this out and everything’ll be fine. I just really have to deal with this right now, it’s really important and I have to go, okay?”

“Okay,” Eddie says, because he doesn’t know what else _to_ say. He’s not sure there _is_ anything else to say. Richie studies his face for a long, hard second before he kisses Eddie again.

“I’m so fucking sorry, Eds,” Richie tells him. “I swear, I wish it wasn’t like this.”

“Okay,” Eddie repeats. Richie frowns, but there’s nothing to be done. He won’t explain, and Eddie can’t expect anything more unless he does, and that’s it.

“I’ll be back soon,” Richie says again. There’s no way he can know that, or that Eddie can believe it, but he says it anyways before another patron of the restaurant comes down the hall, searching for the bathrooms. They break apart, and Eddie can’t think of anything to say before Richie’s rushing out of the restaurant.

Eddie goes back to the table alone. He sits down, still feeling shaky, and rubs his face with his hand.

“What happened?” Bev asks. Eddie shakes his head.

“I don’t know,” he says. His voice breaks, and Bev pulls him in, hugging him tight from the side as Eddie starts to cry in earnest.

* * *

In the end, they spend an hour in a park down the street from the restaurant. Eddie recounts everything he and Richie have gone through up to this point, with only minor censoring and paraphrasing of Richie’s private calls, and cries more than he thinks he has in years. By the end of it, he feels wrung-out, and the other Losers are alternating between bewildered, angry, and concerned for the both of them. He gets how they feel. The whole thing is a confusing, tangled mess.

“Is there anything we can do?” Mike asks, when Eddie’s out of story to tell.

“I don’t know,” Eddie says. “I feel like I don’t even know what _I_ can do.”

“I wonder what the hell’s going on with him,” Bill says. “This isn’t like him.”

“You don’t know what his life’s been like,” Audra points out. They all turn to look at her. Defensively, she adds, “Well, all I’m saying is, you haven’t seen each other in twenty years? Maybe he just has something going on he doesn’t want you to know about. Maybe he’s embarrassed. Lord knows that’s enough for me to keep a secret.”

Eddie sighs, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. He can feel a headache growing behind his eyes, and he’d rather be alone and in darkness when it comes. At least, in his apartment, he can be as upset as he’d like, cry as much as he wants, without worrying about who sees or what they’re thinking about him. He can just maybe _relax_ a bit, let go and just get some of this terrible feeling _out._

“I think I just want to go home for now,” Eddie says.

“That’s a good idea,” Mike agrees. “Maybe he’ll call when he lands.”

“We can come and pick you up for dinner later,” Bill suggests. “If you’d like that.”

“That sounds nice,” Eddie says. He pushes up from the bench Bev had led him to sit down on when they first arrived, standing and stretching his sore joints until they pop. Strangely, he misses Richie, and it makes his chest ache again. “Thank you all for today. I’m so sorry I—”

“Don’t be,” Bill cuts him off. “Don’t be sorry at all, okay? We understand.”

Eddie nods, swallowing past the lump in his throat. He manages a choked, “Thank you,” and Bill smiles back at him. Before Eddie knows it, he’s being tugged into a tight hug; an instant later, he’s at the middle of a ball of his friends, all wrapped close and warm and secure around him.

“Thank you,” Eddie says again. Someone kisses the back of his head; someone else strokes his back. Eddie relaxes just an inch.

The ride back to his building is eerily quiet. The car feels cold and empty; Eddie has to turn on the radio to keep from wanting to scream just to shatter the silence. He’s partially thrilled to be going back to an empty apartment, and partially dreading it. He has to drag himself up the stairs from the garage, up to the elevator, further, further. It feels like he’s climbing a goddamned mountain, for all the energy it drains from him.

When Eddie gets off on his floor, he pauses.

In front of his apartment door, someone’s sitting with their back to the wall. Whoever it is has a backpack beside them and a hood up, and Eddie, briefly, feels a flicker of fear. It’s only when he makes himself take two steps closer down the hall that he realizes how small the person is, lanky and thin and— _oh._ She’s a child.

“Hello,” Eddie says hesitantly. The girl’s head snaps up, and she looks at Eddie with wide eyes behind huge glasses, fear filling her face. Eddie points to his apartment door and asks, “Were you waiting for me?”

The girl scrambles up to her feet, pulling her backpack up onto her back as she goes. “Are you Edward Kaspbrak?”

Eddie nods, brow furrowing. She can’t be older than nine, ten years old, but he doesn’t think he’s seen her in the building before. “Yes, that’s me. Have you just moved in? Are you lost?”

“Kind of?” she says. Eddie frowns.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“I ran away,” she tells him. Eddie looks down the hall past her, then back over his shoulder, as if the girl’s mother or a police officer will appear from nowhere and deal with this. He feels concerned and confused and he honestly just wants to lay _down,_ but something about this girl is bothering him.

“Ran away from who?” he asks. “From home? Did something happen to you?”

“I got in a fight with my mom and my dad told me he was staying here,” she says. Eddie has only two more seconds where he has no idea what she means before everything clicks into place. His heart jumps into his throat, and he steps closer to the girl, crouching down a bit to look into her face. She doesn’t move, more credit to her, and just stares up at him, all huge green eyes and freckled cheeks and—

“You’re Richie’s daughter,” Eddie says, breathless.

“Oh, okay, good, he’s told you about me,” she says. She leans up on her tiptoes, peering over Eddie’s shoulder. “Is he with you?”

“Oh, God, no,” Eddie groans, covering his face with his hand. “He said he had to fly out to California. He got a call and—”

“My mom,” the girl cuts off. “Oh, shit.”

Eddie feels like he should admonish her for her language, but then he thinks, ridiculously and deliriously, that she’s _Richie’s daughter,_ so of _course_ she talks like this. His mind is racing and he feels like he might possibly pass out. Belatedly, though, he remembers he’s also the only adult of the two of them, and somebody needs to handle this.

“Okay,” Eddie says, slowly. He takes a deep breath. When he looks down at the girl, he doesn’t know how he didn’t realize she was Richie’s daughter the second he saw her. She’s the spitting image of him at her age, eight or nine years old, lanky and knobby and all tangled red hair and wild kinetic energy in her fidgeting limbs. She looks to Eddie like he’s going to solve everything, same way Richie does, and Eddie exhales before repeating, “Okay. Let’s— Let’s go inside, get you a glass of water, and— and call the airport, see if we can catch him.”

“Okay,” she agrees. She rubs at one eye with a fist, her face blotchy-red. He can tell she’s upset, her face going splotched just like Richie’s does when he’s getting worked up. Eddie hesitates before he leans his cane against the wall and grasps her shoulder in his hand.

“It’ll be okay,” he tells her, trying to seem as firm and kind and helpful as possible. She seems to relax under his touch, relieved that he’s in charge now. Before he knows what’s happening, she’s wrapping her arms around his neck and tugging him down to her level for a hug.

“Thank you,” she says. “I’m really sorry, Mr. Kaspbrak.”

“Don’t you worry about it,” Eddie says. “We’ll figure everything out, okay?” He pauses, then says, “And you can call me Eddie.”

“Eddie?” she asks.

“Your dad calls me Eddie,” he says. She pulls away from him, so he unlocks his front door, pushing it in for her to enter first. “You can, too. If you want to.”

“Okay,” she says. “Then you can call me Jessie. Only Mom ever calls me Jessica.”

“Jessie it is,” Eddie says, heart racing. He pushes his front door shut behind them and says, “Sit down anywhere you’d like, Jessie, and I’ll grab the phone.”

“Thank you,” she says again. She sits down on the very edge of his sofa, looking nervously at the neat line of his throw pillows. When he looks at his apartment from a child’s point of view, he realizes how clinically organized and untouchable it must seem. Richie had done a great deal to make the place seem more lived-in, leaving odds and ends all over the place, but he hasn’t been here long enough to truly change it.

Just to make her feel more comfortable, Eddie dislodges the lamp on the side table when he sets his landline down on it. He hopes it’ll make her feel like she can move around in this place. He even knocks one of the pillows out of line when he pulls away.

“Let’s see if we can catch your dad,” Eddie says, feeling nearly like he’s in a dream as he says it. Jessie just nods and flips open his phone book for him, already searching for the airport.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 👀👀👀👀👀


	8. a delicate balance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie isn’t even entirely sure how to talk to other adults, let alone a nine-year-old child.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> make sure to peep the new tags up above!!!!

Eddie isn’t even entirely sure how to talk to other adults, let alone a nine-year-old child.

He wants to be able to help Jessie, but he doesn’t know anything about her. He doesn’t know how to deal with her, or what she’s supposed to eat— or  _ when  _ she’s supposed to eat, he has  _ no  _ idea. There’s also the whole  _ Richie didn’t mention her  _ thing, so he knows absolutely nothing about her, personally. He doesn’t know if she has allergies, or if she has a good relationship with both or either of her parents, or if she needs medications, heaven forbid.

All of this rushes through his mind as he calls the airport just to find out that the last flight out for Los Angeles has already left and, yes, someone with the last name  _ Tozier  _ did buy a last-minute ticket for a single seat. Jessie can’t hear what’s being said to Eddie over the phone, so he tries to keep his face carefully neutral. He doesn’t want to scare her by panicking, by reacting so strongly it shows on his face.

“Thank you so much for your help,” Eddie makes himself say before he hangs up the phone. With a sigh, he pushes his glasses up into his hair, rubbing at his eyes.

“Is he there?” Jessie asks, only half-hopeful. Eddie thinks he should maybe give her more credit than he has been; she seems a lot smarter and more perceptive than he assumed a nine-year-old was capable of. She’s like a small adult, almost, it seems.

“No, I’m sorry,” he says, pulling his glasses back down into place. “The flight already left about half an hour ago, they said. Would you rather call your mother?”

_ “No,”  _ Jessie answers quickly. Her face goes blotchy-pink like Richie’s does when he’s embarrassed, and she drops her head, focusing her eyes down on her hands. “I mean. If you have to, you— I can give you her number.”

Eddie hesitates. He’s not a stranger to having difficulties with one’s mother, but he’s also a grown man. Jessie’s only nine, and it seems like the right thing to do, to call at least  _ one _ of her parents to come and collect her. Then again, he doesn’t entirely know the situation. All he knows is what he’s heard Richie arguing about over the phone — that Jessie’s mother’s name is presumably Alex, and she doesn’t seem to get along well with Richie and Jessie both.

“Can I ask you something first?” Eddie asks. Jessie nods, tugging her backpack closer into her lap, wrapping her arms around it tight. “Can I ask why you ran away?”

Jessie looks back down at her hands clasped over her backpack. Her glasses slip to the very end of her nose, and she uses the back of her wrist to push them back up. She hesitates before she tells him, facing down to the ground, “I got in a fight with my mom.”

“I got in a fight with my mom recently, too,” Eddie tells her. He comes around the coffee table to sit beside her on the sofa, settling his cane along the arm, within his reach. Jessie’s eyes, so much like Richie’s, track him as he moves, only to flick down when he looks straight at her again.

“What did you fight about?” Jessie asks.

“Lots of things,” Eddie tells her. “Mostly, though, we— we fought over what she wanted from me.”

“What did she want from you?” Jessie asks. Eddie looks down at his own lap, tapping his fingers against his knee. “Something bad?”

“No, she— Well,” Eddie cuts himself off. He amends to say, “She wanted me to be somebody that I’m not. And I spent too much time letting her tell me what to do, and pushing me to do what she wanted, and ignoring what  _ I  _ wanted. Finally, I knew that I needed to tell her she had her own life to live, and I had mine.”

Jessie nods, listening to this, keeping her eyes secured on her hands. She tugs at the top strap of her backpack before she exhales slowly and looks up to him.

“Mom doesn’t like it when I go out with my friends,” Jessie tells him. “And she never lets me go to anyone’s sleepovers, and I can never go to the mall, even when my friends’ moms go with us. And whenever I want to ride my bike she doesn’t let me go. And she’s always yelling at me and Dad and she always says that I don’t know what I’m doing but I  _ do.” _

Eddie’s heart races. He turns to Jessie and asks, “Why does she yell at you?” Jessie shrugs. “Does it happen a lot?”

“I don’t know,” Jessie says. “I guess. She thinks I’m too loud and she doesn’t like my drawings and she doesn’t like when I play in the house but she doesn’t let me play in the yard, so I  _ never  _ get to do  _ anything.” _

It takes a long moment for Eddie to catch his breath, but he does. It’s like he’s talking to himself twenty-odd years ago, and it’s that knowledge that drives him to ask, “Why did you run away from home?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Jessie says at first, defensive and sharp. She looks to Eddie, then away again, fiddling with her backpack straps. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Eddie says. “This must be really scary, coming all the way here by yourself. It’s okay if you’re feeling a little scared.”

Jessie nods, her blotched-pink face going red. She sniffles, then rubs under her nose with the back of her hand. “I didn’t know where else to go, and Dad told me the address he was staying at in case I wanted to write a letter or if I needed him for anything, and— and that was here, and I figured, I figured I’d come out here and talk to him and maybe I could stay here. He said I could come if I wanted, before he left, but Mom said I didn’t want to, even though I did.”

“Okay,” Eddie says, breathless. “How  _ did  _ you get here?”

“I took a taxi and got an airplane ticket with my birthday money,” Jessie tells him. “And then I took another taxi to come here, except then I didn’t know how to get inside or where Dad was if he wasn’t here. I didn’t call him before I left and I should have, because he said I could but I didn’t even think of it.”

“That’s okay,” Eddie assures her. The more she talks, the more panicked she gets, her eyes filling with tears and her knuckles going white with how tightly she’s gripping her backpack. Nervous, hesitant, he reaches out and grips her shoulder again, hoping it’ll help.

Without warning, she dissolves right into him, dropping her backpack to the floor so she can throw herself into his side. She tucks her legs up under herself and folds into him, throwing her arms around him, clinging tight. She starts crying in earnest, and he can only hug her in return, rubbing her back when she starts to hiccup on air.

“It’s going to be okay,” Eddie tells her. “Hey, shh, shh. It’s going to be okay. I’ve got you.”

“I’m so sorry,” she sobs into his chest. He strokes her wild hair back from her face, pushes her glasses away from her eyes so he can dry her wet cheeks with his sleeve. It makes his hand twitch a little, thinking about her germs smearing across his clothes, but she catches her breath for a second long enough to sniffle again because of it. He does it again, then tips her face up so he can look at her.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” he tells her. “You know what I did when I finally ran away from home?”

“What’d you do?” she asks.

“I yelled at my mother,” he confesses. He hasn’t even told Richie this, not all of it, all of what happened when he abandoned his mother to return to Derry at the drop of a hat. “I told her I wanted to leave, and I stormed out of the house, and I went straight to the airport.”

“Just like I did,” Jessie comments.

“Just like you,” Eddie agrees. “And I got the first flight to Maine, and when I got there, I— I cried all night.”

“You did?” Jessie asks, voice quiet.

“I did,” he tells her. “And I wished I could’ve gone to your dad and talked about it with him, too.”

“Yeah?” she asks. “Why?”

“He’s my best friend,” he says. It’s true, he thinks; he certainly doesn’t have any better friends than Richie, and his daughter certainly doesn’t need to know the complicated layers of their relationship right now. “Can I ask you something else?”

“Uh-huh.”

“When your mother yells at you, is it because you’re in trouble?” Eddie asks. “Because you did something you weren’t supposed to? Or just because?”

“I don’t know,” Jessie says. “She just gets mad at me. Sometimes I stay out too late or I go to the park with my friends after school when I know I’m not supposed to and that’s when I get grounded and that’s okay, because my friends get grounded for that, too. But she just yells at me  _ so much  _ and then she  _ said  _ I could go to my friend Ellie’s birthday party and she  _ knew  _ it was a sleepover party and she showed up at the party to pick me up at night even though she hadn’t told me she was gonna—”

“Hey, hey, it’s going to be okay,” Eddie tells her, pulling her back in so he can rub her back again. She’s starting to panic again, breath coming fast, but she seems to have no intentions of stopping.

“No, but then when— When I said I didn’t want to leave, she just yelled at me in front of  _ everyone  _ and it was so  _ embarrassing  _ and I started to cry and that was so much  _ worse  _ and I didn’t know what to do and I said— I said I hated her and she said she hated me, too, and that I should’ve just gone with Dad, so I— I thought I should, and so when I was supposed to go to school this morning I put all my money and my clothes and my books in my backpack and I got off the bus and I snuck out of the bus line and went down to Main Street and I got a taxi and I, I went to the airport, and then when I got here I just came to your building since Dad said he was staying here. I just told the doorman that my dad was upstairs and he said it was fine and let me up and I figured, that’s okay, because he might live here now anyways so  _ I  _ might be able to live here now, too. Which is— is good, I guess. I thought— I thought I  _ should  _ just live with Dad.  _ Just  _ Dad.” She pauses, then adds, “Since Mom doesn’t want me anymore.”

Eddie exhales roughly, feeling like his entire chest crinkles out as he does. He feels angry, and saddened, and scared, but he doesn’t want her to see any of that, frightened enough as she is. He’s well aware that, for all intents and purposes, he’s still a stranger, and she’s completely alone somewhere she’s never been before after what has apparently been a terrible couple of days, if not a horrible week or so without Richie there with her when she needed him.

“Are you going to tell on me?” she asks tearfully. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen. I thought he’d be here and he would say I could stay here and everything would be okay. I didn’t know Mom was gonna call him. She hates talking to him.”

“Oh, honey,” Eddie says quietly. “It’ll be okay. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I didn’t mean to ruin everything,” she tells him, muffled by his shoulder. He rubs over her upper arm, and she sniffles.

“You didn’t ruin anything,” he says. “Not a thing. I had nothing big planned for this weekend, anyways.”

Jessie half-laughs, wiping at her face with her hands again. She pulls back from him and repeats, “I’m really sorry,” but Eddie’s shaking his head before she’s even finished talking.

“Don’t you worry about a thing,” Eddie says. “I’ll help you fix it, okay? And once your dad’s plane lands, I’m sure he’ll call here, and we’ll be able to tell him everything. Then, we’ll figure out what to do from there. How’s that sound?”

“Okay,” she whispers. She scoots a bit away from him so she can reach her backpack on the ground and scoop it up again. “I’m really sorry. I promise.”

“I know you are,” Eddie says. “I believe it. I was really sorry when I left, too, and I was almost forty.”

“Did you have to move back in with your mom?” Jessie asks. She sits up straight, abruptly, then looks over her shoulder. “Wait, is she here?”

“No, no, she isn’t here,” Eddie assures her. She relaxes a bit, slumping back down into the couch, closer to him again. She’s even leaning back a bit, now, into his neat throw pillows, knocking them even more out of place. Eddie finds that he doesn’t mind it all that much. It’s like how he lets Richie smear ice cream on his cheek without having a crisis over the sticky-tacky feeling on his skin. Sometimes — maybe only with Toziers, it seems — things like that are okay.

“She didn’t make you come back when she found out you ran away?” Jessie asks. “Even though you’re old?”

Eddie laughs. She reminds him a lot of Richie, especially when she’s smiling like she is now, even though she’s looking down at her hands again. “No, she didn’t make me. I decided she couldn’t make me and that I wanted to get my own place.”

“And that’s here?” Jessie said.

“That’s right here,” Eddie says.

“And you get to see your friends?” Jessie asks. “And go to the movies and have sleepovers?”

“I do,” Eddie says.

“And she doesn’t yell at you anymore?” Jessie asks. “Not ever?”

“She still does, sometimes,” Eddie tells her. “She’s still my mother. I have a hard time saying no to her sometimes.” He knocks his shoulder into hers and says, “Even though I’m old.”

She sniffles another laugh, then looks up at him. Her face is so jarringly like Richie’s, all sharp angles, a strong jaw, bright green eyes that are glassy-bloodshot right now, standing out from the dense freckles of her face. For a moment, it’s like he’s nine years old again himself, looking at his friend. Then, though—

Then, he blinks, and he remembers he’s past forty, now, and has a nine-year-old child in his care who has spent the day traveling by herself. For all as responsible and capable as she seems, she’s still a scared kid who ran away from her mother to father, only to find a complete stranger that she promptly spilled her guts to. He can only imagine how overwhelming it all must be.

“Until we get your dad on the phone, is there anything you want?” he asks. “Are you hungry, do you want something to eat? Are you tired?”

Jessie bites her lip hard between her teeth, then frowns, shaking her head. She looks over her shoulder again and asks, “Do you have any games?”

Smiling, Eddie says, “I think I have a couple of board games. Would you like to play one?”

“Yeah,” she says, sitting up, grinning. “Do you have KerPlunk?”

“No,” he tells her. Her face falls a bit, so he adds, “But I do think I have Jenga.”

Her face lights up again, and she says, “Jenga’s close enough,” so he goes to get the game box from the closet in his hall. The thing had been collecting dust until recently, when Richie found it on the top shelf and insisted they play a couple of rounds. Eddie has to stretch to grab it back from where Richie slid it, just nearly out of his reach. Like Richie would be the one to get it next time. Like he wasn’t going to leave, even though he did.

“Here we are,” Eddie says, pushing thoughts of Richie aside for now. “Why don’t you set it up while I get you something to eat?”

“Okay,” she says. “Thank you so much again, Mr. Kaspbrak. Uhm, I— Oh, sorry. Eddie.”

“You’re more than welcome,” he assures her. “Don’t worry about it. I’m happy to help, okay?”

“Okay,” she agrees. She leans over his coffee table and unceremoniously dumps the entire box’s contents of wooden blocks out on the tabletop.

In the sanctuary of his kitchen, Eddie allows himself to grip the edge of the counter by the sink and hyperventilate until he can barely breathe. Shuddering, arm shaking, he pushes his forehead into the cool granite. It grounds him, for a moment. At least until he’s able to catch his breath again. With a hitch in his throat, he turns the faucet on full blast, throwing cold water splashing into the basin.

He catches a palmful of water and throws it in his face. The next palmful he brings directly up to his closed eyes, pushing his face into the water and letting it drip down his face and his wrist in streaking icy droplets. His breath shakes out, then back in. For all he’s panicking, he’s steadier each time he inhales.

“Okay,” he tells his own sunny, faded reflection in the kitchen window. “Okay, you’re just fine. You’re just fine, and you’re going to handle this just fine. She’s just a little girl. Richie will call when he lands, and then he’ll come right back. Nothing is wrong. Everything is going to be fine.”

He can feel his last words like they’re echoing in vibrations around him, reassuring him. He feels angry, still, and more anxious about the whole thing than ever, but he has no choice but to try and stay calm. There’s only so much he can do right now, and Jessie needs him. There’s nobody else for her here but him until Richie comes back.

_ Richie.  _ That’s another entire piece of the puzzle that he just can’t figure out. Why didn’t Richie tell him he had a daughter?  _ Why  _ on  _ Earth  _ did he keep this a secret, even when Eddie believed he was sleeping with someone else? Why didn’t he just tell the  _ truth,  _ just explain everything and let Eddie decide how he’d react from there? Having a child is far,  _ far  _ better than having an affair, in Eddie’s opinion. He can’t begin to understand Richie’s thought process.

_ Or,  _ he thinks. Maybe he can. He hadn’t wanted to say anything to Richie because of his mother, at first, because he didn’t want to drag Richie into the mess of that and all that came  _ with  _ that. He never wanted Richie to have to deal with the same thoughts and horrors and frustrations that plague him every day because of the life he’s led since leaving Derry the first time.

And yet, in spite of all of that, they fell in together anyways. Richie hadn’t minded his panic, or his nightmares, or his neuroses. He didn’t  _ mind  _ that Eddie sometimes has to stand in the shower scrubbing himself raw until he feels like the world isn’t pressing on him anymore. He  _ doesn’t mind  _ that Eddie’s Eddie.

He wishes he didn’t understand why Richie might be afraid. He wishes that Richie could just  _ know  _ that Eddie wants what’s best for him, no matter what. That he loves him. That having a child is far from a make-or-break situation. But he also knows Richie, and he knows how terrified Richie gets of being abandoned, or alone, or forgotten. He knows how tightly Richie clings to the people in his life; he always has.

Eddie throws another handful of water in his face before twisting the faucet off again. After a moment where he just breathes, he calls into the other room, “Do you have any allergies?”

“I don’t think so!” Jessie shouts back. “If I do, though, I don’t think I’d die!”

Eddie laughs to himself as he goes to open the cabinet nearest his head. She’s Richie’s daughter, sure enough.

* * *

After six rounds of Jenga and two games of Life, Eddie and Jessie are both startled by the intercom ringing by the front door. Eddie sets his tiny car piece down three spots down the pathway on the game board before standing.

“Let me check on that,” he says. “Don’t you peek at the cards while I’m gone.”

Jessie’s hands shoot back into her lap, and she grins up at him, too playful to be all innocent. He remembers Richie cheating at board games, too, sticking cards up his sleeves while Eddie wasn’t looking so he could slip them out later. Sometimes, he’d even send them out in a spray to make Eddie laugh.

“I won’t,” she lies, just like Richie does. He grins and goes to press the intercom.

“Hello?” he asks.

“Eddie?” Bev’s voice asks over the speaker. “Eddie, honey, we’re here to pick you up for dinner. Are you okay to come down?”

Eddie nearly curses before he catches himself. He’d completely forgotten about the Losers’ earlier promise to take him out tonight, after their time spent comforting him in the park. He glances back over his shoulder to Jessie. She doesn’t seem to have heard Bev, but she  _ is  _ peeking at the cards, quick and nervous, grinning the whole time. Eddie smiles and turns back to the intercom.

“Actually,” he asks, “would you all mind coming up? I could use your help with something.”

“Oh,” Bev says, clearly surprised. She sounds mildly reassured when she says, “Okay, Eddie, sure thing.”

“I’ll buzz you up,” Eddie says. When he returns to the living room, Jessie jerks back from the board, shoving her hands behind her back. She’s not quite old enough to have mastered the finesse of the tricks, Eddie notes, but she’s better at it than Richie was at her age. Presumably because  _ Richie’s _ the one who’s been teaching her the tricks, and that just makes warmth flood Eddie’s whole body right away.

“Who was it?” Jessie asks. She crams something into his couch cushions; he makes a mental note to dig the card back out later.

“Some friends of mine and your dad’s,” Eddie says.

“The Losers?” Jessie asks. At Eddie’s inquisitive frown, she adds, “Dad says all you Losers are his best friends. He kept saying he wanted me to meet you guys someday.”

“Well, then, he should’ve waited for you here,” Eddie says, and Jessie laughs. She still seems a little anxious, moreso than she had before the bell rang, so he sits next to her again on the sofa, for a moment. “Are you okay meeting new people? I thought they might be able to help us until your dad calls and comes back, but if you don’t want to see anyone else, that’s completely fine, I’d underst—”

“I’m okay,” Jessie cuts him off. “Besides, Dad says you’re all his family. I didn’t even know he had any other family besides me until he saw you when he went on his trip to Maine.”

Eddie’s heart catches again, and he tells her, “That’s right. They are— We are his family. We are.”

“So that means you’re mine, too,” Jessie says. Like it’s that easy.

After a moment, Eddie thinks,  _ Why  _ can’t _ it be that easy? _

“Sounds good enough to me,” Eddie agrees, just as someone knocks  _ shave and a haircut, two bits  _ into his front door. For all her talk, Jessie sits up ramrod-straight, face going pink again. Eddie lays his hand on top of her hair for a moment before he stands. “Everything will be okay.”

She stands, too. After a beat of hesitation, she reaches out and grabs Eddie’s hand. When he looks down to her, surprised, she glances up at him in the same moment, all wide eyes and flushed cheeks.

“Okay,” she agrees. He squeezes her hand, and she squeezes back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thinkin' 'bout Him (90s eddie kaspbrak) always


	9. on the line

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jessie looks up at him with green eyes even brighter than Richie’s. For a moment, she says nothing, biting down hard on her lower lip. Then, she says, “Can I stay with you?”
> 
> “Of course,” Eddie tells her, cupping her face in his hand. “As long as you need me, I’m right here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 90s reddie is my lifeblood

The first person through the door is Beverly, and she stops short with an, “Oh, my  _ goodness,”  _ that makes Eddie laugh nervously.

He’s not certain why  _ he’s  _ so nervous — Jessie isn’t  _ his  _ kid, nor is  _ he _ the one who’s a nine-year-old on the completely wrong coast — so he tries to tamp the anxiety down. Jessie’s hand is clammy in his; her grip tightens on him when she sees Bev. He squeezes her hand back.

“Why doesn’t everybody come in?” Eddie suggests. Ben nearly bumps into Bev, expecting her to keep moving. “Here, just— Come this way, come here.”

Eddie escorts the Losers to pass him and Jessie into his living room. Jessie won’t leave his side, clinging tight to his hand every time he takes so much as half a step. When Stan comes in, the last one to enter the apartment, Eddie takes that as an opportunity to take Jessie aside for a moment. She rocks back on her heels, leaning around Eddie a bit so she can keep half an eye on the rest of the Losers.

“They’re your father’s friends,” Eddie tells her. “They can help us. But if you’re not comfortable with them, or— Or if you’d be  _ more  _ comfortable staying with Beverly, or with Patty, then that’s completely okay. You just tell me and I’ll help you.”

Jessie looks up at him with green eyes even brighter than Richie’s. For a moment, she says nothing, biting down hard on her lower lip. Then, she says, “Can I stay with you?”

“Of course,” Eddie tells her, cupping her face in his hand. “As long as you need me, I’m right here.”

She nods vigorously, leaning in to hug him. He rubs her back, looking back over his shoulder to the Losers. Stan makes eye contact with him, face furrowed in a confused frown. Eddie sighs, separating himself from Jessie.

“Why don’t we talk with them?” Eddie suggests. “And go from there.”

Jessie nods again. She doesn’t let go of Eddie’s hand when he releases her, though, and stays close to his side when he turns to his sofas to face his friends.

“I probably shouldn’t be the one to introduce her, but this,” Eddie says, raising Jessie’s hand a little bit, “is Richie’s daughter, Jessie.”

Everyone’s eyes shift from Eddie down to Jessie. She shrinks back. After a moment, she straightens up a bit, then says, “It’s short for Jessica. Which I hate.”

The Losers are still quiet, for another beat, before Bev says, “You know, I like Jessie better.”

“Actually, me too,” Stan agrees. Jessie’s hand relaxes in Eddie’s; when he looks down at her, she’s grinning already.

“Dad says he wanted to name me something cooler but Mom overruled him,” Jessie tells them. When Eddie looks back to the Losers, smiling, he finds a couple of them already with their eyes on him. His smile slips a bit. He finds it harder to keep up with their knowing eyes on him like this.

“I’m guessing you being here has something to do with Richie’s sudden departure earlier,” Bill comments. Jessie shyly shuffles closer to Eddie, dropping her head down again. “Oh, uhh— Hey, sorry, I didn’t mean anything by that.”

“She wanted to come see Richie,” Eddie takes over, when it becomes clear Jessie isn’t going to answer that. “She just forgot to ask Richie before coming over.”

“Aha,” Beverly says.

“Have you called him?” Ben asks. “Richie?”

“He’s already on a flight out,” Eddie tells them.

“So you called ahead to the airport so he’ll call here first?” Mike asks. Eddie frowns. “You  _ did _ do that, didn’t you?”

“Why wouldn’t Richie call here as soon as he landed?” Eddie asks in return. The thought— hadn’t crossed his mind, that Richie might not call him as soon as he hit land again. Jessie looks up to him nervously, reaching up to wrap her second hand around their tangled fingers.

“Won’t he call here?” Jessie asks. “What if he doesn’t call? What if he goes to see my mom, and my mom yells at him, or—”

“Hey, hey, that’s not going to happen,” Eddie tells her. He squeezes her hands, turning back to the Losers; Patty’s already half-standing from the sofa, looking nervously from Jessie to Eddie. “We’ll call the airport right now and see, we’ll make—”

Eddie’s cut off by the shrill ring of his telephone. He squeezes Jessie’s hands one last time before releasing her to go pick his landline up off the hook.

“Hello, this is—”

“Hiya, Eds,” Richie says on the other end. “Listen, I just got out to the Hills, and I thought I should—”

“Richie, she’s here,” Eddie cuts him off. He keeps his eyes down on the buttons of his voicemail machine, pointedly ignoring the eyes he can feel burning holes in his head. Both on his end and on Richie’s, there’s a silence so complete he swears he could hear a pin drop on either coast.

“She’s… here,” Richie repeats. “There. I mean. She’s there. She’s  _ there?” _

“Yes,” Eddie tells him. He turns to look at Jessie, and she stares back, eyes wide. He motions her forward with his chin; she goes to him, clutching the edge of his side table, staring up at his face as she waits.

“And I’m assuming you’ve talked to her,” Richie says.

“No, I made her sit in the corner in silence, Richie,” Eddie replies. Richie lets out a slightly hysterical laugh. “Yes, I talked to her.”

Richie’s quiet for a long moment before he says, “I was trying to find the right way to tell you. Eds, I swear I was coming up with it. I wanted to tell you the right way, just— just so you understood, you know?”

“We can talk about that later,” Eddie tells him. “What do you want to do?”

“Is she there with you?” Richie asks. “Can I talk to her?”

Eddie looks down at Jessie before he shifts the phone so he can use his palm to cover the mouthpiece. He asks Jessie, “Will you talk to him?”

Jessie nods quickly, reaching for the phone and taking it in both hands tightly. She pulls it up to her ear and asks, “Dad?” Eddie can’t hear what Richie’s saying on the other end, but Jessie clutches the phone tighter and says, “I got in a fight with Mom and I remembered you said— No, I didn’t— No, Dad, I just—” She stops, listening. After a moment, her eyes fill up with tears, and she drops her head. Softly, she confesses, “I didn’t want to stay there anymore, I wanted to stay with you.”

Eddie sets his hand on her shoulder tentatively. She sniffles, looking up at him just as the tears start to spill down her face. He rubs her shoulder, and she leans into him, shuffling under his arm.

“No,” Jessie says into the phone. She wipes at her face with the back of one wrist, sniffling again as she repeats, “No. No. Uhh…” Jessie looks up to Eddie again and says, “Yeah. Uh-huh.” She pauses, then says, “I love you, too. I’m really, really sorry, I just thought you’d be here, I didn’t mean for—” She stops, then says, “Okay. Okay, yeah, here you go.” Jessie holds the phone up to Eddie and tells him, “He said he wants to talk to you.”

Eddie releases her shoulder and takes up the phone again, flipping it up to his ear. “Rich?”

“Hey, Eds,” Richie says. “Can I ask a real big favor of you? It’s completely alright for you to say no, I’d totally understand.”

“What is it?” Eddie asks, having a feeling he already knows exactly what the favor might be.

“Can you hold onto Jessie for a few more hours?” Richie asks. “Just a few. I’m gonna call her mom and then fly right back out there.”

“You— What?” Eddie asks.

“I’m gonna talk to her mom,” Richie repeats, “and then I’ll come right back. Do you mind keeping an eye on her until I’m back? I swear, I’ll get there as soon as I can, I’ll take the next flight out and be there by morning.”

Eddie looks down to Jessie. For a moment, in his mind’s eye, he imagines what it would’ve been like if his father had lived long enough to take  _ him  _ to the opposite coast, away from his mother and all the terrible things that happened to him with her. Jessie looks up at him with her huge eyes, and he can’t say no to that.

“Of course,” Eddie tells him. “Richie, of  _ course,  _ she’s more than welcome to stay with me, but— Are you certain that’ll be alright with her mother?”

“I’ll deal with Alex,” Richie says. “Something tells me this isn’t going to be much of an issue.”

Eddie’s veins run cold as his blood turns to ice. He looks back to Jessie again as he says, “You’ll have to tell me about that, too, once you’re back.”

“Yeah,” Richie says, “I figured I might have to.”

“You have a  _ lot  _ to talk to me about,” Eddie says, dropping his voice. Jessie turns into him again, wrapping her arms around him and hanging on tight. After a moment where Eddie can only watch her, he adds, to Richie, “But I want you to know something first.”

“What’s that, Eds?” Richie asks.

Eddie hesitates for a moment before he steels himself and tells Richie, “You’re both welcome here with me. If you need a place to stay.”

“Eddie, I— We couldn’t—”

“You can,” Eddie cuts him off. “You’re my best friend, and you always have a place with me, no matter how you feel—” Eddie stops, then amends to say, “No matter what. Got it?”

Richie pauses. After a beat, he says, “Got it,” and Eddie can hear the smile in his voice. “I told Jess I’ll be right back out and that I love her. I’m gonna tell you the same things, Spaghetti Man.”

“Richie,” Eddie says, so soft he’s not even sure Richie can hear him. He’s not sure what they are right now, or what they’re going to do next, but he  _ does  _ know Richie will be coming back to New York soon, and Richie’s daughter is here, and soon they’ll be able to talk everything out. The promise of being able to at least sit Richie down and get the truth out of him is enough for Eddie, right now, in the middle of all the chaos. The eye of the hurricane, somewhat.

“I’ll be right back out there,” Richie says. “And I love you, Eds.”

Eddie pulls the phone away from his ear so he can press the back of his wrist to his eyes. He takes a long, slow breath; after a moment, he wipes at his eyes and brings the phone back around. “I’ll talk to you when you’re home—  _ here. _ When you’re back out here.”

“Are the Losers there?” Richie asks.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Gotcha,” Richie says. “Well, I’ll let you off the hook this time around.”

Eddie, in a brief, horrifying flash, is inundated with images of a world where Richie’s plane goes down, or Jessie’s mother kills him, or some tragedy befalls them both while they’re on opposite coasts and they never see each other again. His heart jumps into his throat, and he grips the phone tight, knuckles going white.

“Rich,” Eddie says. He hesitates a beat, then says, in a rush, “Richie, I— I love you, too.”

Eddie can hear the grin in Richie’s voice when he says back, “Gee, Eds. You sure know how to make a man feel special, you know that?”

_ “Richie,”  _ Eddie admonishes him, twisting away from the other Losers and Jessie so he can hide his face as he says, “Just— Come back, and we’ll figure it out, alright?”

“As you wish,” Richie replies. “Love you, big guy. See you before the sun comes up.”

“Okay,” Eddie replies quietly. Richie lingers on the line for another couple beats of their hearts before he hangs up with a click, leaving Eddie with the dial tone. For a moment, Eddie hesitates. Then, he untwists himself and hangs up the phone.

“So?” Ben asks eagerly. Bev grips his thigh, digging her fingers in under his kneecap until he laughs,  _ “What—” _

“What can we do?” Mike asks instead.

“Richie’s going to talk with Alex,” Eddie says, tapping the edges of his nails on top of the telephone receiver. “And then he’s going to come out here, and we’re going to work on figuring all this out.”

_ “Really?”  _ Jessie asks incredulously. “I— Really? I can stay?”

“For now,” Eddie says. Jessie jolts through the space between them, grabbing him in a tight hug and burying her face in his chest. He rubs her back as he looks to the others.

“Can we help at all?” Bev asks. Eddie hesitates, then looks down to Jessie.

“You hungry?” Eddie asks. After a beat where she processes what he’s asking, Jessie nods eagerly, grinning up at him. Eddie turns to Bev and says, “You can add one more to our dinner reservations.”

* * *

Eddie was certain he would be a firm enough authority figure that he could convince Jessie to stay in his apartment and sleep while he picked up Richie, but she was having none of that. She insisted on accompanying him, even falling asleep sitting up on his sofa, waiting to make sure he wouldn’t sneak out without her. As if he would; he was lied to enough times as a child not to lie to  _ this  _ child.

Jessie falls asleep again in the car on the ride to the airport, but she rouses when he parks in the small lot he usually parks in. The guard at the gate recognizes him — or they recognize the name of his service, either or — and lets him park there when he says he’s picking up a client.

The entire way in to find Richie’s gate, Jessie leans heavily into his side, yawning. Eddie’s certain it’s nearing four in the morning, and he’s no expert on how much nine-year-olds sleep, but he’s certain that he wouldn’t have enjoyed being up this early at her age. He supports most of her weight for a while before he gives in and stops her.

“Eddie?” she asks sleepily. Eddie just crouches down and scoops her up in his one arm; she’s still small enough that, when she clings to his neck, he can hold her up on his hip easily enough. She buries her face in his throat and yawns again.

“You just rest,” Eddie tells her. “I’ll wake you up when I see your dad, okay?”

“M’kay,” Jessie mumbles. She’s heavier than the last kid he held, but that was just his employee’s baby, and it was only for a minute. It’s a little more difficult to carry her through the airport, but she’s a grounding weight for him. And honestly, for her, she’s sleeping better with him than she had been in his guest bedroom,  _ or  _ on his sofa,  _ or  _ in the car, so he’ll take it, for now.

At Richie’s gate, the woman behind the desk tells him the flight’s only about twenty minutes delayed, and that it’ll be in any time now. Eddie takes a seat gratefully, letting Jessie settle in his lap, still asleep, curled up on him, limbs dangling, all dead weight.

For a long while, Eddie just watches the sun come up through the huge glass windows that make up the walls of the airport by the gates. He strokes Jessie’s hair, over and over, listening to her quiet, even breathing as she sleeps.

Eddie watches the planes come in, too, until one rolls into a slow stop at the gate he’s waiting at. He can’t see into the windows, but he tries anyways, shifting up out of his half-sleep so he can crane his neck and try to watch for Richie. He can barely even see the gap between the plane and the jetbridge, but he thinks he sees Richie go through it. He’s certain he’d know that man’s body anywhere, those long legs especially.

It takes a moment where Eddie has to redistribute Jessie’s weight again, but he manages to get to his feet again, still holding her on his hip, just as before. Each of the people who comes through the doors off the jetbridge is a disappointment, because none of them are Richie. It’s not until he steps through the doors himself that Eddie finally relaxes, smiling in spite of himself and the way he and Richie left things when he’d fled the restaurant.

“Eds!” Richie calls. They lock eyes, and Richie breaks into a run to come back to him. He looks like he’s about to collide with Eddie before he realizes Jessie is asleep and skids to a halt, coming to a stop just steps away from them both. He closes that last gap between them after a beat, almost hesitant, before he cups the back of Jessie’s head and kisses her hard on the temple.

“She’s alright,” Eddie assures him, before Richie can ask. “Just a little rattled. She’s feeling a lot better than when I found her in my hallway.”

“Eds, I’m really sorry,” Richie tells him. “I promise, I told her where you were at but— Never in a million  _ years  _ did I think she’d—”

“Don’t worry about it right now,” Eddie cuts him off. Richie keeps stroking Jessie’s hair, his eyes fixed on Eddie. “We can talk about it after we’ve gotten some sleep.”

“Alright, yeah,” Richie agrees. “I’m sorry, though. You gotta know how sorry I am.”

“I know you are,” Eddie allows. Richie hesitates, then looks back over his shoulder. Eddie does the same; nobody’s looking in their direction. When Richie looks back to him, Eddie allows him to lean in and steal one soft, chaste kiss, quick and then gone.

“Let me take her,” Richie says. “Then you can bring us on home. How’s that sound?”

There’s— There’s a  _ lot  _ to talk about still. They have to figure out what to do with Eddie’s job, and Richie’s, and with Alex, and with  _ Jessie,  _ and with  _ each other,  _ their relationship and the fragmented bits of it that splintered before Richie left without a word of explanation. There’s a hell of a lot to sort through, and Eddie still feels hurt and exhausted and more than a little confused.

All that being said, though, he’s also just  _ tired.  _ He’s happy Richie’s back here with him, that he can help figure out what all this is, that he’s a part of Richie’s life and that Richie is a part of his — and all that comes with, no matter what.

And Richie looks good. He looks  _ good,  _ even if he looks exhausted, too, glasses smudged and a hat on crooked, still in the same rumpled clothes he’d put on for lunch with the Losers. It feels like a lifetime ago. He takes Jessie from Eddie into his long arms, hitching her up onto his hip. She grips onto his shirt on instinct in her sleep, fists twisting up in the fabric. In the next moment, she blinks, squinting and frowning when she sees Eddie in front of her.

“Your dad’s here, honey,” Eddie tells her softly. She twists quickly to look up at Richie, shocked, and throws her arms around his neck when she sees his face, nearly pitching them both backwards when she shifts her weight that fast.

“I’m so sorry,” Jessie tells Richie tearfully, still half-asleep and bleary. Richie kisses her cheek, then her forehead, making the noises smackingly loud and dramatic so she’ll laugh.

“Don’t you be sorry,” Richie says. “We’ll talk all about it after we’ve gotten some shut-eye, kid, okay? But I’m not mad at you. I was just so— I was  _ so  _ scared, Jess. You really freaked me out disappearing like that.”

“I’m sorry,” Jessie says again, voice in a whisper. Richie drops his head down, bringing their foreheads to meet so he can push their noses together. She laughs again, still teary-eyed but calming down.

“It’s  _ okay,”  _ Richie assures her. “It’s okay. Just promise me you won’t do that again, okay?”

“I won’t,” she rushes to agree. She straightens up as they walk through the airport, back for the lot, nearly knocking Richie over again. “I promise I won’t, I just got really scared and I wanted to come out and see you and I— I missed you so much—”

“Shh, shh,” Richie shushes her. He comes to a stop in the middle of the sterile, quiet airport hallway, in the middle of the crowds bustling around them for baggage claim and the parking lots outside. Eddie stands in between them and the closest stragglers.

“I told you, he wouldn’t be upset with you,” Eddie tells her, keeping his voice low. She nods, clinging tight to Richie, burying her face in his throat again. Richie looks down to Eddie, even as he kisses the crown of Jessie’s head.

“Eddie’s right,” Richie says. “I’m not upset with you at all. I don’t even blame you a little bit. I would’ve done the same thing.”

“Really?” Jessie asks, sniffling.

“Really,” Richie tells her. “Really and truly. But we’ll talk about that later, okay? How’s after breakfast sound?”

“Sounds good,” Jessie agrees.

“Oh, sounds good?” Richie asks. He tickles her side, grinning when she shrieks with joy. Over her laughter, he asks, “Does it sound good? Does it? Does it meet your standards—”

“Dad,  _ stop,”  _ Jessie begs, laughing, gasping. He relents, kissing her cheek again before hoisting her up on his hip once more, getting her in a better position to carry her out to the lot. She drops her head down on his shoulder, yawning. Richie meets Eddie’s eyes over her head.

“After breakfast sounds nice,” Eddie echoes. Richie smiles at him, then turns, jerking with his head to summon Eddie to follow him.

In the car, Richie sits in the back, buckling himself and Jessie in so he can keep his hold on her. She stays asleep the entire ride home; partway through, Richie drifts off, too, his head tilted against the back of the seat. When Eddie looks in the rearview mirror and catches them together, heads tucked side-by-side and Jessie’s hands fisted in Richie’s shirt while they sleep, his heart catches in his chest. It takes all he’s got to just keep his eyes on the road the rest of the way back home.

**Author's Note:**

> You can (and should!) come chat with me on Twitter at [@nicole__mello](https://twitter.com/nicole__mello) (new @!) and/or on Tumblr at [andillwriteyouatragedy](http://andillwriteyouatragedy.tumblr.com/).


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